this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2024
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Working from home surveillance vs an employee's privacy - balance needed, lecturer says (www.rnz.co.nz)
submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Companies have the right to monitor employees to ensure productivity but they must also protect the employee's privacy, an Auckland University Business School lecturer says.

Last week US banking giant Wells Fargo sacked more than a dozen people for allegedly faking keyboard activity, pretending they were working at home when they were not.

The bank has not said how it picked up on the problem.

But a survey last year of 1000 US-based companies showed 96 percent of them were using some kind of monitoring to check up on employees working from home.

All of this raises questions around ethics and productivity.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I don't get how checking keyboard activity or number of emails sent is helpful from an employer perspective.

If these people aren't working... then why can't this be measured by, you know, their work not being done?

If you can't tell if their work is being done without a keylogger then maybe you don't need them?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago (1 children)

It's not about the employee, it's about the supervisor being able to justify their position with remote employees. They can no longer micromanage by walking the aisles of cubicles or offices to see people working, so they have to justify their existence in some way in a WFH environment.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

You don't need to do that in person either. Somebody is getting done what is expected of them or not.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

Yup.

This isn't about performance, it is about control.

Worse still, if the employee is still getting work done without said middle manager "adding value" then why keep the middle manager?

Even worse still, what if the employee is getting the same amount of work done in less time... Perhaps there are bigger problems, in management.