Potential, a 150,000-member UK union for tech professionals, recently reported that nearly one in three workers in the UK are currently under supervision by their employer both at work and in their own home. Unacceptable. And it never happened.
As Prospect Secretary General Mike Clancy put it: “We’re used to the idea of employers testing workers, but when people work from their own homes, this assumes a completely different dimension. all new. New technology allows employers to have continuous windows into employees’ homes, and its use is largely unregulated by the government. We think we need to upgrade the law to protect worker privacy and place reasonable limits on the use of this snooping technology, and the public completely agrees with us.” .
It’s not just the UK Here in the US, according to Top10VPN, a virtual private network (VPN) review site, Employee monitoring software usage increased 54% last year during the first waves of COVID-19 — and it has only continued to grow since then.
Workers don’t like it, but the law in the US is actually on the employer’s side. NS Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), which prohibits third parties from intercepting and disclosing electronic communications. But ECPA allows employers to monitor the electronic and verbal communications of employees that are conducted, “in the course of normal business.” The related Stored Communications Act (SCA) covers the seizure of stored electronic communications — email, groupware chats (à la Slack), and instant messages. SCA also allows managers to access information stored outside of normal business processes. For example, if you send a love letter to your special friend via corporate email, forget to expect privacy.
And if you’re using a corporate communication system, whether it’s your business’s Zoom, the Microsoft Teams edition or whatever, if a business is paying for a service, it’s yours. them, not employees.
Therefore, I can understand the electronic monitoring of employees within limits. For example, a few years ago, a friend’s company suddenly had an internal server that was slow for no reason. They later discovered that an employee had used the company’s hard drive to store a truly impressive collection of pornography, which exceeded 80% of the total available storage. Sorry!
I draw a line between making sure employees don’t abuse your technology and spying on them. For example, if your person work from home are using their own PCs, I hope you don’t install any kind of spyware on them.
Still better, like Galen Gruman, executive editor for global content at IDG, said earlier this year, buy your workers the equipment and services their business needs. That way, there are fewer questions about what’s work-related and what’s not.
I always feel that way. Whether it is keyloggers or webcam, I hate anyone looking over my shoulder. I’m not the only one.
Popular shows, such as SpyTech’s NetVizor, track keystrokes, site visits and searches, applications used, random desktop screenshots, and more to track employees. SpyTech claims that they can do all of this with NetVizor, “completely in stealth mode.”
I am not a fan of this spyware brand. I am a fan of the results. I don’t care if my staff watched the first new episode of Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop Instead of working. I don’t care if they don’t write the necessary 50 lines of production code a day or they work while YouTube is playing Lady Gaga in the background. All I ever cared about was the end result. If they can complete the quest, I don’t care how they get there.
I myself work best with playing music. If you work best in a crowd with the TV turned on in the background, you’ll have more power. It’s all about getting the job done.
Hiding that you’re spying on your employees leads to mistakes. Sure, most office workers, whether their office is at corporate headquarters or in their kitchen, know that you can see Slack messages, emails, and websites they’ve visited. But there is a new kind of surveillance software from companies like Smart control and StaffCop easier to penetrate. These allow the operator to remotely control the user’s webcam and microphone. Unacceptable.
Look, if you feel like you can’t trust your employees, then why would you hire them in the first place?
In September, 4.4 million Americans quit their jobs. Never before in our history have so many employees left. If you don’t want your people to look down on you, I recommend rethinking your use of surveillance — both hardware and software. People don’t like to feel untrusted, and today it’s too easy for them to walk out the door. Then where will you be? Instead, extend your employees’ trust, measure them by their results, and your business will perform much better.
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