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Workplace Surveillance Becoming More Common
An anonymous reader writes For better or worse, surveillance technology is becoming more common in the workplace. These tools are being used to measure and monitor employees, with the promise changing how people work. "Through these new means, companies have found, for example, that workers are more productive if they have more social interaction. So a bank's call center introduced a shared 15-minute coffee break, and a pharmaceutical company replaced coffee makers used by a few marketing workers with a larger cafe area. The result? Increased sales and less turnover." Of course, this kind of monitoring raises privacy concerns. "Whether this kind of monitoring is effective or not, it's a concern," said Lee Tien, a senior staff lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco.
Surveillance is only the tool. How it is used (abused) is the key. For example, a camera in the break-room kills good will. Pointedly saying we will be monitoring, but not the break-room increases good will.
Wait what, social interaction makes people more productive? You mean they don't feel like their existence is validated by the calm fuzzy warmth of fabric covered cubicle walls? They need to talk to each other too? But what if they criticize management? Managers' fragile egos can't handle even the possibility of criticism of any kind! You there! Stop talking! Eyes back on the computer screen!
Seriously - they needed surveillance to figure out that workers were happier and more productive when they had some shared sense of purpose?
What next - needing surveillance to figure out people are bothered by random loud buzzing noises?
One day, I was puttering away on some project when the phone rang. "It was totally an accident!" "What was an accident." "I didn't mean to go to that website." "What website." "The porn site." Then it dawned on me that this woman actually thought I sat around all day watching what people were doing on their computers.
Watching someone shoot themselves in the foot is far less amusing when said foot is on your neck.
I was the VP of IT for a twenty-plus year old SaaS firm with about 200 employees. I was there for three weeks when one of the interns came in and told me they forgot to install "a security update" for my new company issued laptop. He said it would force my laptop to reboot. I was in the middle of going getting acclimated to the IT budget so I said I'd install it myself later. He agreed. Later that day I inserted the flash drive and saw one binary. I right-clicked and saw the digital signature belonged to Spector 360. Red flags! Red flags!
I spoke to the VP of IS and his jaw hit the floor. We ran Wireshark on his PC and sure enough, it was constantly communicating massive amounts of encrypted data to an internal server that had no hostname. We looked through the employee handbook and there was no mention of monitoring of employee internet use. For a moment, we thought our intern was working with a competitor. But, before we went crazy with that, our next step would be to talk with my predecessor who had stayed with the company to head up a new division. He immediately clammed up and told us we needed to talk to the CEO about it. He refused to talk any further.
We went to the CEO and calmly asked about the program and what was being collected. Apparently, he had the previous VP of IT and the intern installing this software on every PC and laptop and that it was configured to capture everything: keystrokes, screen wipes, browsing history, IM history, etc. I was appalled and I knew my counterpart from IS was as well. Nevertheless, we warned him that controls needed to be in place to determine who has access to this information, under what circumstances the access is granted, etc. We emphasized the risk he was putting the company in. We were very professional and didn't even touch the creepy aspect. He said we'd all have a meeting about it in the morning. He scheduled it for 8am with me, the IS guy, the COO, company counsel, and the company president.
At 4:45PM, about an hour after we received the meeting invite, both me and the VP of IS were rounded up, taken to the CEO's office, and promptly terminated.
shorten that to:
unions are needed.
again.
sweatshops (for computer guys) are on the return. if you and I are not careful, we will be so close to the old ways, we will have to fight that old war back again. we already lost our weekends and we lost time and a half for overtime (my grandfather used to get 1.5x, 2x and 3x time for time past normal work hours). we don't get that - we're now the evil thing called 'exempt' and we get cheated out of our own time and extra pay.
add to insult the fact that all corp firewalls have a MitM proxy in them, corp windows boxes are handed out preloaded with certs installed (for the mitm firewall entry) and at some places (like where I work) its been known that spyware and remote mic/camera stuff can be activated and logged/reviewed by your boss. how do I know: because in .de they have to disclose this and my work has offices in .de ; in the US they don't disclose what they do when spying but over in .de they do).
if we dont fight back, things will continue to get worse.
oh right, we don't have unions so we are all afraid of speaking out, for sake of our jobs.
well, so we have 2 problems to solve, then.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Indeed, recording people with legal authority who have the ability to easily ruin people's lives is a whole different case. Especially when the recording is happening in public.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Dear Corporate America,
Your employees will begin to resent your "15 minute department coffee breaks" as soon as they learn they were born from spying on work habits, or pulled out of the latest fad HR / Management best seller. This ranks up there with silly morale boosters like "crazy Hawaiian shirt Fridays" for a developer team that is crushing 60 hour weeks and just wants to go home.
Please accept a few thoughts on true lasting employee and corporate culture improvements:
1, end the "Corporate Daycare" mentality. Arriving at 8:05 isn't the end of the world, particularly if that employee is conscientious about staying until 5:10 to compensate. Actually, have you heard of "Flex Time" , at all? Adult professionals shouldn't be shamed for making coffee at 3:30 requiring they leave their desk for 20 minutes.
2, Realize that company-provided smartphones are essentially the same as taking your manager home with you, and stop fucking sending emails after 5pm unless it's an emergency. Stop sending meeting invites at 9pm for 9 AM meetings with the expectation that employees will see it, reply immediately and be present the next morning. Let's just tie this back to "treat people like adult professionals, the way you would like to be treated."
3, Your company suffers failure of imagination and naked greed. Make your employees participants in your companies' success. Ask them for product improvements, new product ideas, and give them more than a plaque or a parking space for coming through with groundbreaking ideas. Give them bonuses. Uncomfortably large bonuses. Watch in amazement as suddenly your employees are transformed from the cave-dwelling Morlocks from HG Wells "The Time Machine" to highly motivated people who will make the company significantly more money.
4, Value for Value. Pay people what they are worth. Treat them with respect. They will work hard for you.
5, There are artists - people who can start with a blank canvas and create a photorealistic painting from their minds' eye. There are people who can't do that, but can take a blank canvas, pencil a grid on it, and methodically reproduce the photorealistic painting with 95% accuracy. This is the difference between Richard Branson and every asshole with an MBA. Far more often than not, the largest source of employees' discontent stems from bad management. Leading and motivating people is a preternatural talent, and the people with that gift are worth sourcing and retaining at all costs. All star leadership will cut your employee churn, boost your productivity, and earn your company more money.
6, Stack Ranking, Six Sigma, when will you people realize that human beings are psychologically complicated animals and applying scientific optimization models originally designed to optimize efficiency in industrial manufacturing environments has little or no value when applied to the talking meat populating your cubicles.
Six Sigma is spectacularly effective at destroying true innovation, creativity and blue-sky thinking, and has no place outside of the factory. I'm glad everyone who attended a training seminar at the airport Hilton immediately ads "Six Sigma Level 3 Grand Wizard" in their Outlook signature to quickly identify those persons I never, ever wish to have a meaningful conversation about new product with, as part of the Six Sigma training is to destroy the part of the brain responsible for creative thinking by way of directed electrical current applied using a special helmet. Other electrodes in the helmet stimulate the part of the brain making you feel incredibly enthusiastic about applying Six Sigma to everything you imagine to be possible.
Stack Ranking is essentially the same cruel process used by 10 year olds choosing teams for kickball at recess, and often with the same level of consideration. The guy answering his company Outlook emails until 10:30 every night, who also pipes up frequently in meetings - albeit absent any meaningful contributions in either - color me surprised if that guy doesn't do well in the soul crushing quarterly Stack Rank.
Corporate America is soulless.
THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK.