Here we are in this huge wave to move work from the location determined by the business, company, or organization, to telecommuting and working from the home. Now that you are working from home, is your employer spying on you?
When you’re working on location, on the job site, in the office, in the factory, your work is being monitored to varying degrees by management, via casual live monitoring such as walkthroughs, and looking over your shoulder to utter surveillance via video, telephonic, and software management, filtering, and tracking.
For most companies and organizations, there is a paranoia about tracking employee productivity. In the employee space, there has been a certain degree of trying to manage one’s output and doing as little as possible while looking as though you are being a good employee, so as to warrant you’re being paid for the work that you do.
There is an awareness that the employer will have a level of expectation, and it’s up to each employee to manage that balance in their own way because if one does to do so, his or her days of employment are certainly numbered.
Because management is fearful that there will be slackers in the midst of the employee field, it is on them to ferret them out and send them packing when they are found. So, monitoring the workflow of the labor pool is extremely important to the bottom line.
Now, the pandemic has forced employers to allow much, if not nearly all, of their workforce to telecommute and work from home in order to attempt to survive these unprecedented times.
The fears of management, complicated by not having a more effective way to monitor productivity, has led to a huge growth in the employee tracking and surveillance channel.
If you are not used to being spied on at home while working, and it makes you feel uncomfortable, you may have overlooked how you were being monitored previously by your employer. There’s a good chance that if you are at work, using a company computer, that you have been tracked in a variety of ways, such as surveillance cams, keyboard trackers, periodic screenshots, full network access, and Internet activity, in addition to telephone usage.
Thanks to the Electronic Communications Act of 1986, it is perfectly legal for your employer to track you electronically while you are on the payroll and using company equipment, as long as you have been notified, and notification can be as little as small print on your employee agreement. A lot has changed since 1986, and I could see this being updated thanks to the growth in the telework sector of the United States of late.
Though it may seem like an invasion of privacy because this type of surveillance is happening in your home, it is the nature of the beast, and you have choices.
What are your choices when you’re being spied on by your employer?
- You can choose to work remotely with your current employer
- You can negotiate the degree to which you are tracked by your employer
- You can look for a different employer that is not as fearful
While some employers are obsessed with overseeing the movements (and thoughts if they could) of every employee’s every moment on the time clock, there are others who have other ways to track employee productivity and are more apt to trust their employees to deliver results somewhat self-managed.
It all comes down to you, and what you are comfortable with. The times are changing and you have the right to choose what you will tolerate and what you will not. If you are not liking being electronically micromanaged, then talk to your employer about it to see if you can find a better way to report your productivity when telecommuting and working from home.
If you are unable to reach common ground with your present employer, start looking for something to which you are better suited elsewhere.
See also: Dark Side of Teleworking