How employees are increasingly watched over by remote-working bosses

Joshua knows that having his work monitored is part of his job.

His employer, a London-based money market broker, uses a software system that automatically tracks his activity. Joshua’s last name has been withheld to protect his job security.

Every detail of your work computer has been optimized to allow you to monitor it: from the screen turn off time, set to the lowest setting so that the boss can more easily check if it is idle, to an instant chat tool , designed specifically for use in any communication with colleagues.

He works from home on the premise that his boss can verify any login or keyboard or mouse tap.

Joshua claims he is so used to being tracked that he often forgets about it. “Investment banks often operate under paranoia. The data we handle is so sensitive that any disgruntled employee can do great damage,” he said.

Although he was never explicitly told he was being monitored, Joshua explains that this is common in his industry. UK law requires companies in the financial sector to have a surveillance programme. And in the United States, financial institutions are required to keep a record of all work-related communications.

For Joshua, this creates a work culture where any missteps can be identified and punished, thanks to monitoring technology.

“You have to understand that everything you write is being read by management,” he explains. “All is well until the day you get caught off guard and fired for saying something deemed inappropriate.”

Employee monitoring has been around for some time in a variety of guises, from recording shop floor time to collecting worker data in heavily regulated industries such as finance.

But surveillance software, often clandestine in nature, began to infiltrate administrative work amid the pandemic, spreading among industries that traditionally didn’t require scrupulous tracking of employees.

Now, with remote and hybrid work patterns becoming increasingly common, employers are looking to manage results and teams with monitoring software.

While this can help enable collaboration outside the office, in some cases these surveillance tools can also be implemented amid fears that employees won’t do their jobs away from the eyes of bosses.

But what if employees start to dislike being watched, could it destroy their confidence and motivation? Or is the problem not necessarily the technology, but the way it is being implemented?

Increased surveillance of employees

From surveillance in stores to monitoring in call centers, some bosses have long used technology to keep an eye on their employees, whether for safety or performance reasons.

Scott Walker, managing director of British human resources company XpertHR, says employees in these industries tend to be more accepting of monitoring as its importance to the business has long been established.

“In certain work environments, such as call centers, monitoring is used for training purposes. In other industries that need to meet legal requirements, data collection [também] makes sense,” he said.

But the pandemic has triggered the indiscriminate use of employee monitoring. As teams began working from home, some employers installed surveillance software to track their productivity.

A December 2021 study of over 2,209 workers in the UK found that 60% of them believed they had been subjected to some form of surveillance and monitoring in their current or most recent job, compared with 53% in 2020.

The use of these monitoring tools grew even as most employees returned to the office full or part-time. Consulting firm Gartner says the percentage of midsize and large US employers using monitoring tools has doubled to 60% since March 2020.

According to Brian Kropp, vice president and head of HR research at the Gartner group, that number is expected to reach 70% in the next two years. “Originally, companies were concerned about people working from home: ‘Are they going to work or just sit and watch TV?'” he says. “Tracking tools were introduced to monitor productivity.”

Much of this surveillance software has since been installed on work computers, with or without the employees’ knowledge. Nicknamed bossware (derived from boss, or “boss” in English), several of these programs can record keystrokes, take screenshots and secretly activate the cameras of employees working from home.

This technology often goes unnoticed, which means workers may not know that their boss is really spying on them.

And while remote work flourished, surveillance also thrived. Employees at investment banks, for example, have complained that this is being done covertly through their ID cards and presence data.

Monitoring has been extended to sectors that do not necessarily have a track record of employees. Kate, for example, works for a design and marketing agency in California, USA. When employees started remote work, a tracking device was installed on their computer.

She was told that the software was a means of tracking her hours. But, in addition to access times, it controls your browser tabs — and periodically takes screenshots that are sent to the company for analysis.

Kate —whose last name is also omitted—says that the software affects her intervals. “I’m not sure why capturing my screens creating illustrations is essential to my work. And the software really slows down my computer,” she explains.

“I get nervous to even watch a five-minute video on my lunch break because I’m afraid someone will see a YouTube screenshot and it could get me fired.”

The long term consequences

Unsurprisingly, the rapid increase in employee monitoring is eroding employee-employer relationships. As surveillance increases, so does the mistrust of workers.

In a recent survey of 2,000 American remote and hybrid workers, 59% of them reported feeling stress or anxiety about their employer watching their online activities.

Key factors include constantly wondering if they’re being watched and the pressure to work longer and take fewer breaks during the day. Nearly half said surveillance is a breach of trust.

Kropp says the covert nature of monitoring can be very damaging to employee trust. “Overall, workers are not very excited about the idea of ​​surveillance,” he says.

“But you can respond to concerns by being honest and transparent about why you’re doing it and how the data is being used.”

“When the company doesn’t communicate and employees find out they’re being monitored, it becomes a bigger problem. Employees wonder why they’re being watched and tend to start believing their employer is ‘hunting them’,” he says. Kropp.

As more and more companies now have some form of monitoring, it will become increasingly difficult for workers to choose companies that do not have some form of employee surveillance, even amid the hiring crisis and the scramble for talent in some countries.

Remote tools used by workers, for example, are increasingly being integrated into monitoring technology. “We probably won’t have separate technology to monitor or track employees in the future,” says Kropp. “It will become more embedded in what we do and how we work. [mesmas] tools we use to work are the ones that will track us.”

In addition, some companies even implement the same productivity-tracking software to monitor workers’ well-being, according to Kropp: “Data collection is essentially the same. facial expressions and their interpretation, but with the prospect of finding out if someone is working too hard and if there is a risk of burnout.”

Some experts believe that the growing ubiquity of worker monitoring, in addition to employee discomfort, could harm the work environment.

“More than a culture of fear, a culture of lack of trust can be created”, says Kropp. “This lack of trust makes it all the more difficult for the organization to get its work done.”

But the problem is not necessarily the technology, but how it is implemented. A degree of monitoring can actually be beneficial for managing workflow and employee morale, particularly among remote and hybrid teams.

San Francisco-based data analytics startup Stellate has a fully remote team spread across the world. In addition to collaboration tools, it tracks employee development with training and mentoring software.

“You need to bring teams together around the ideas and intent behind the monitoring, then reconcile the process,” says Sue Odio, Stellate’s head of operations. “It’s less about the product you use and more about the intent.”

Kropp believes that in the next phase of hybrid work, employers will set an ethic about whether, when and how monitoring should be implemented. For him, transparent guidelines will help employees choose the right company for them.

“Some companies will say that they give maximum autonomy and flexibility to the employee, with zero monitoring and total trust. Others will make it clear that there is greater vigilance and will present salary as their value proposition”, according to him.

Joshua got used to recording his activities.

“Before, I had heat and motion sensors installed under my desk,” he says.

“Now it’s more subtle. Even working remotely, it’s very easy for them to know what I’m doing, thanks to the monitoring tools. For me, it’s not about fairness; it’s simply a consequence of the process.”

This text was originally published here.