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- Author, Kate Morgan and Delaney Nolan
- Rolle, BBC Worklife
1 hour ago
Before the pandemic, Mark had a lot of autonomy in his job in the IT department of an American industry. He and his colleagues could have done their jobs, he said, “without our manager managing too much.”
“But that all changed when the company switched to teleworking. Surveillance began on day one,” said Mark his last name being withheld for professional reasons.
The company began using software that allowed remote control of employees’ computer systems. Mark says his team had to give the manager the password “so he could log in without us having to accept it. If the password changed, he emailed it first thing in the morning.”
Mark’s manager explained that the purpose of this monitoring was to make sure everyone stayed productive and had the same type of open communication that they had in the office. In fact, the surveillance made Mark anxious and helped him quickly feel overwhelmed and burned out.
“It was a lot of tension, I felt like I had to be actively using the computer all the time because I was afraid he would think that something like a phone call or a bathroom break would be a slowdown on my part,” he says.
With the advent of remote work, there has been a surge in desktop monitoring. Estimates for 2022 show that the number of large companies monitoring their employees has doubled since the pandemic began.
There are monitoring programs that record keystrokes or track computer activity with regular screenshots. Other programs record phone calls or meetings and even have access to employees’ webcams.
Or, as with Mark, some programs allow full remote access to employee systems.
Regardless of how professionals are monitored, many companies use monitoring because they believe it ensures remote workers are productive, according to Professor Karen Levy of Cornell University’s Department of Information Sciences in the United States. She is the author of Data Driven: Truckers, Technology and the New Workplace Surveillance.
But amid the surge in surveillance, there is mounting evidence that electronic surveillance can do more harm than good in some cases. Employees resent surveillance, which can cause stress, lead to layoffs, and even cause professionals to intentionally lower the quality of their work.
More professionals are observed
A 2021 study by internet security tool Express VPN among 2,000 employers and 2,000 professionals working remotely or in a hybrid system showed that about 80% of employers use monitoring software.
“Managers are increasingly interested in using software to monitor employee keyboards, activity, and attention in new ways,” says Levy.
She adds that some managers are even “collecting more specific data on how workers communicate — as far more communication is through digital channels than facetoface — and over their bodies, with wearables and biometrics.”
For example, some companies have installed clocks that track employees’ fingerprints to record their departure and arrival times. Others use webcams to collect eye movement data, which is used to track employee attention.
Still other companies, according to Levy, not only monitor what employees are doing at any given moment, but also use that information to anticipate what they might be doing through “predictive analytics, for example, when a professional is willing to ask for a raise or.” left for another job”.
Software that monitors employees’ search history and even their social networks can show if they are looking for a job, and trackers that capture cues like tone of voice can show the level of engagement from professionals.
Not all companies that monitor their employees do so out of distrust. Some have to do this “for security reasons or to comply with laws or regulations in some sectors,” according to Levy. But most use these programs voluntarily.
“Too often, managers think that knowing more about what employees are doing is useful to make decisions, avoid waste, or force professionals to stick to organizational goals,” says Levy. And some bosses just want to know what their employees are willing to do.
Microsoft’s 2022 Work Trends Index survey found that 85% of leaders struggle to believe their employees are productive. And indeed, “productivity paranoia” has become a big issue during the pandemic.
David Welsh, a professor at Arizona State University in the United States, researches behavioral and organizational ethics. He notes that companies often take a maximalist approach to employee monitoring.
“They think over and over again, let’s use all the tools at our disposal,” he says. “You want to have as much control as possible. And of course, that control can often feel overwhelming for employees.”
preference for privacy
Research data shows that monitoring employees is often counterproductive. Welsh and a team of researchers argue that surveillance can make employees more likely to break rules.
caption,
More and more companies monitor their employees
In one study, he and his colleagues found that American professionals who were monitored took more unauthorized breaks, intentionally worked slower, and stole more office supplies than their unsupervised colleagues.
To determine the causes and not just the correlation, the team designed a second study in which professionals are given a series of tasks and an opportunity to cheat them. And the bottom line was that half who knew they were being monitored were more likely to cheat.
According to Welsh, being monitored made participants feel a lack of power and responsibility, which led to bad behavior.
They would be more likely to cheat while being watched because “they felt controlled and had less of a sense of responsibility because of the way they were being monitored,” he says.
It is a phenomenon difficult to quantify, but its understanding is more direct: when professionals are not treated with dignity and have no autonomy, they suffer. And they often subvert the rules of the workplace to regain a sense of control.
Welsh also claims to have “confirmed this unintuitive idea that, under certain circumstances, surveillance may actually lead people to break more rules or evoke the same behaviors that it was intended to prevent”.
Researcher Rudolf Siegel of Saarland University, Germany, and one of the authors of a recent metaanalysis on the effects of electronic surveillance, says that “it was really surprising that we didn’t find any positive effects on performance”. In other words, the data showed that monitoring employees did not bring any benefit and, on the contrary, damaged the culture of the work environment and encouraged counterproductive behavior.
Workers who have been observed against their will may also devote more energy to finding creative ways to circumvent the controls imposed by employers. Siegel recalls a case of a truck driver with GPS using tinplate to cover the tracking system’s antenna.
In another automation case, supervised workers were more likely to turn off and put away the robots they were using at work.
“Being watched all the time increases our stress levels and interferes with our sense of autonomy and dignity,” says Levy. “So managers who overly monitor employees can also result in people leaving in search of work environments where they feel more respected.”
Looking for the best way to observe
It is important to note that surveillance is not objectively bad in all cases. It also brings benefits.
For example, some data shows that observing can increase performance and productivity. However, the impact may vary by position and specialty. And results often vary based on how employers adopt these technologies.
For Karen Levy, the real problems arise when surveillance that started in a rational or even beneficial way slowly drifts into another area and makes employees uncomfortable.
“The problem is often that when you’re pursuing for a reason, it’s very easy to add other motivations,” she explains. “For example, if you need to monitor employees because the law requires it, it’s very easy to justify increased monitoring and review of employee performance in the name of productivity or efficiency, since you can often use the same technology to do both.”
And it’s no surprise that employees aren’t very happy when companies push their boundaries, which can cause them to leave those supervised jobs.
A Morning Consult survey of 750 technology professionals in 2022 found that half of them would rather quit than have their employer monitor them during the workday.
Levy believes some employers will recognize the risk and stop monitoring instead of losing employees.
“I think that employers, even if they’re acting solely in their best interests, might choose to limit surveillance to make their work environments more attractive to highdemand professionals, making people want to stay in their jobs longer,” she says.
There may also be ways to make monitoring a less uncomfortable experience for employees. When employers are transparent and anticipate the need and purpose of monitoring, the Spiegel and Welsh studies show that the negative impact is greatly reduced.
David Welsh states that employees are less likely to cheat when they feel “the organization is treating them fairly”.
“So if you’re being monitored but you’re like, ‘I’m working for a fair company, they’re doing the right thing,’ you don’t have that negative reaction… [os funcionários] want leaders who are ethical and treat them well,” he says.
So there’s a way for employers to know what people are willing to do without alienating employees. And the biggest advance, according to Levy, is getting professionals involved.
“A good place to start is to involve professionals in the process in a meaningful way to determine what technology is being used, how the data being collected is being handled, who has access to that data, and really looking at how technology can help employees to do their job rather than serve as a threat or a police tool,” she said.
In some cases, just increased communication can be enough to help employers and employees find a happy medium.
When Mark reached the limit of his boss’ vigilance, he fired off a lengthy email explaining what made it so damaging. He was prepared for a backlash from the critics but decided it would be better to have an angry boss than to be watched.
Mark was relieved when his boss agreed to find a solution.
“I suggested that we email him a report at the end of each day and let him know what we’ve done, what we’re planning to do the next day, and if there are any problems,” he says. “His response was that he only looked at the screen occasionally, didn’t see the problem, and agreed with my suggestion.”
The result: while Mark and his colleagues were stressed and agitated, the boss hadn’t noticed. All it took was open communication, not covert surveillance, to settle the matter.
Of course, many people work with business leaders who would be much less receptive to that kind of criticism — and some professionals may not have many resources. But Levy says his leaders would do well to listen to those concerns.
“Even if they don’t give up surveillance entirely,” she says, “there are ways to use these tools with more respect for practitioners.”