How do employees feel about being monitored?
Workplace surveillance has been around for a long time and employees don't like it. They sometimes feel as if they are being spied on. Employees are not as productive when they know that they're being watched all the time.
Some employers use surveillance to monitor employee behavior and productivity to avoid fraudulent activity and keep the business safe from threats. However, there are many ways in which employers can avoid over-monitoring their employees:
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Employers should have a clear understanding of what is monitored and what is not monitored
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Surveillance should only be used when necessary
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Employers should notify employees before implementing surveillance
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Surveillance shouldn't be used without permission or explanation
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Why would you NOT buy my product?
Tech is a pretty hot industry right now. Many devs would leave before they have every keystroke monitored
As a dev I would definitely leave a job with any level of monitoring. If i'm not trusted to do my job, then I shouldn't be working there.
They would feel bad.
Yeah, They do feel bad.
This is exactly why I strive to avoid traditional employment at all costs.
The workplace is becoming increasingly dystopian.
They almost won by normalizing open-floor office space for "culture" and "collaboration" reasons (lol), but then Covid hit, remote took off, all of a sudden it's impossible to put the genie back into the lamp, and employers are scrambling to regain that lost control, surveillance, and monitoring that they once enjoyed over their employees.
It won't be long before they have eye-tracking software to ensure you're actually physically in front of your computer during office hours.
Imagine during your annual performance review:
If you think this is far-fetched, you don't understand corporate employers and middle managers.
If you think collusion isn't a thing, I have a bridge to sell you.
It's like phone companies with non-removable batteries and other forms of planned obsolescence.
In theory, you can just switch to someone else.
In practice, everyone has adopted these shitty practices and would rather die than to go back.
Monitoring is a devil.
Employers are weary of monitoring every interaction of their employees. For one it's very expensive to be able to store all that data. Employees live on the internet. Just imagine how much worthless data is collected on them when your collecting information on everything they do. It's not economical.
Instead employers are trying to track specific actions on specific applications, and they want the data anonymized. It's not about being Big Brother. Companies would instead prefer to know if their employees are generally doing something or not, but it's not about punishing individuals.
No one wants to live in 1984, but in the remote working world companies do need to understand if their employees are using the applications they purchased and if they are using them the amount they expected. A SaaS app could be $50/seat, so it's just about validating their investment.