{"id":1845,"date":"2023-03-01T10:36:00","date_gmt":"2023-03-01T10:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ld-wp.template-help.com\/wordpress_58404_v4\/if-obama-had-ruled-like-this-in-2009-hed-be-the-reforming-president-we-all-hoped-for-15\/"},"modified":"2023-03-07T10:35:06","modified_gmt":"2023-03-07T10:35:06","slug":"how-worker-surveillance-is-backfiring-on-employers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ld-wp73.template-help.com\/wordpress\/prod_3201\/v3\/2023\/03\/01\/how-worker-surveillance-is-backfiring-on-employers\/","title":{"rendered":"How worker surveillance is backfiring on employers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Before the pandemic, Mark had a lot of autonomy in his job in the IT department of a US industrial firm. He and his teammates were able to get their work done, he says, \u201cwithout our manager doing much, you know, managing”<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That changed abruptly when the company transitioned to working from home. \u201cThe monitoring started on day one,\u201d says Mark, whose surname is being withheld for career concerns. The company began using software that enabled remote control of employees\u2019 systems, and Mark says his team had to give their manager the password \u201cso he could connect without us having to accept. If the password changed, he requested it by email first thing in the morning\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The surveillance, explained Mark\u2019s manager, was aimed at making sure everyone stayed productive and had the same kind of open communication they\u2019d had in the office. In reality, it made Mark anxious, and contributed to him quickly feeling overworked and burnt out. \u201cIt was just stressful, feeling that I had to be actively using the computer at all times for fear of him thinking something like a phone call or bathroom break was me slacking off,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the rise in remote work has come a surge in workplace monitoring \u2013 some 2022 estimates posit the number of large firms monitoring workers has doubled<\/strong> since the beginning of the pandemic. Some monitoring programs record keystrokes or track computer activity by taking periodic screenshots. Other software records calls or meetings, even accessing employees\u2019 webcams. Or, like in Mark\u2019s case, some programmes enable full remote access to workers\u2019 systems. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regardless of how they choose to monitor workers, many firms are embracing monitoring because they believe it ensures the productivity of remote employees, says Karen Levy, associate professor in the Department of Information Science at Cornell University, US, and author of the book Data Driven: Truckers, Technology, and the New Workplace Surveillance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But amid the uptick in monitoring, there\u2019s mounting evidence that electronic surveillance can, in some cases, do more harm than good. Workers chafe against it, and surveillance can lead to stress, cause employees to quit and even make workers do their job worse \u2013 on purpose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More workers being watched<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A 2021 study from internet-security tool ExpressVPN of 2,000 employers and 2,000 employees working remotely or on a hybrid schedule showed that close to 80% of bosses use monitoring software<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cManagers are increasingly interested in using software to monitor employees’ keystrokes, activities and attention in new ways,\u201d says Levy. She adds some are even doing \u201cmore fine-grained data collection about workers’ communications \u2013 since so much more of that happens on digital channels rather than face-to-face \u2013 and bodies, through wearable technologies and biometrics\u201d. Some companies, for instance, have installed time-clocks that scan an employee\u2019s fingerprint<\/strong> to clock them in and out. Some use webcams to collect data on eye movement<\/strong>, which is used to track an employee\u2019s attention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, says Levy, other companies aren\u2019t just watching what employees are doing in a given moment, but also using that information to anticipate what they might <\/em>do, through \u201cpredictive analytics about whether a worker is likely to, for example, ask for a raise or leave for another job\u201d. Software that monitors employee search history \u2013 and even social media<\/strong> \u2013 can reveal they\u2019re on the job hunt, and trackers that capture things like tone of voice<\/strong> can indicate a worker\u2019s level of engagement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not every firm keeping tabs on employees is implementing surveillance software due to suspicion; some are required to, says Levy, \u201cfor security reasons, or in order to comply with laws or regulations in some industries\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Before the pandemic, Mark had a lot of autonomy in his job in the IT department of a US industrial firm. He and his teammates were able to get their work done, he says, \u201cwithout our manager doing much, you know, managing”.  That changed abruptly when the company transitioned to working from home. \u201cThe monitoring […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4591,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[7,16,8],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ld-wp73.template-help.com\/wordpress\/prod_3201\/v3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1845"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ld-wp73.template-help.com\/wordpress\/prod_3201\/v3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ld-wp73.template-help.com\/wordpress\/prod_3201\/v3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ld-wp73.template-help.com\/wordpress\/prod_3201\/v3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ld-wp73.template-help.com\/wordpress\/prod_3201\/v3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1845"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ld-wp73.template-help.com\/wordpress\/prod_3201\/v3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1845\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ld-wp73.template-help.com\/wordpress\/prod_3201\/v3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ld-wp73.template-help.com\/wordpress\/prod_3201\/v3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ld-wp73.template-help.com\/wordpress\/prod_3201\/v3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ld-wp73.template-help.com\/wordpress\/prod_3201\/v3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}