As work from home appears the new norm, monitoring software is flying off the shelf
Bloomberg published an article reporting that employers and management are in panic buying mode to get spy software to keep tabs on workers during the COVID-19 world shutdown.
TL;DR – the world is attempting to get by, managers are attempting to prove they’re needed and that Gregg has reason for termination. Thanks Gregg.
This is being presented by management as an attempt to keep workers from taking advantage of flexible work arrangements eg: not coming in to get a disease that can kill them, or someone they love. Taking naps. Getting all their work for a day done in 10 minutes after commenting on every Fark link, etc.
As long as businesses disclose they’re watching, they’re perfectly within their rights to do so (at least in the US,) and with management often struggling to prove they do anything anyway, the workers get to be micromanaged, keylogged, and photographed in some instances to make sure they’re actually at the keyboard.
This type of spy software, at least in one use case attempts to prove to the upper echelons of the corporate ladder that the managers are doing something during the shutdowns where they can’t call meetings non-stop. Most employee productivity can be metriced without looking through their webcam to see if they’re wearing clothes while answering emails or were at the keyboard at 11:08am.
And then there’s Gregg, he’s a slacker anyway but a worse one now so thanks for ruining it for everyone, Gregg.
A takeaway from this is if they hired you they should probably trust you and look at the work you do, maybe not whether you managed to get it all done in a couple of minutes after thinking about it while reading something to distract you from the worry that surrounds us all these days.
If a company doesn’t trust the employees, perhaps it’s time to look for better management and hiring team, not blowing wads of cash in a down turning economy on software to give management something to complain about.
I work with a lot of companies that suddenly are telecommuting. One thing that’s been mentioned over and over again are that these 8-20 person meetings that take an hour and use 10-30 hours of company time plus catering are getting done in 20 minutes flat now.
With upper management looking at business getting done and the wasted meeting costs exposed, wonder what’s going to happen to that re-positioning meeting that was an all hands on deck?
My take on this is nobody wins when you Big Brother employees. Then again, watching the city lockdowns and people going about being idiots maybe I’m wrong. Maybe people need something in place to remind them.
This isn’t really Big Brother, it’s a system of micromanagement that’s never been tested on a world platform, and it doesn’t need to happen to companies that believe in their workforce.
[Bloomberg]
