Many Employers Are Using Tools To Monitor Their Staff's Web-browsing Patterns, Keystrokes, Social Media Posts (theguardian.com)

Olivia Solon, reporting for The Guardian: How can an employer make sure its remote workers aren't slacking off? In the case of talent management company Crossover, the answer is to take photos of them every 10 minutes through their webcam. The pictures are taken by Crossover's productivity tool, WorkSmart, and combine with screenshots of their workstations along with other data -- including app use and keystrokes -- to come up with a "focus score" and an "intensity score" that can be used to assess the value of freelancers. Today's workplace surveillance software is a digital panopticon that began with email and phone monitoring but now includes keeping track of web-browsing patterns, text messages, screenshots, keystrokes, social media posts, private messaging apps like WhatsApp and even face-to-face interactions with co-workers. Crossover's Sanjeev Patni insists that workers get over the initial self-consciousness after a few days and accept the need for such monitoring as they do CCTV in shopping malls.

Comments

Well duh.

[plopez]

Companies tend to be fascist institutions. You follow the leader, obey the hierarchy, and do what you are told. You have no input into how things work and are punished for deviating.

Re: Well duh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Or perhaps we could overthrow existing institutions, maybe severing a few heads in the process, and cease letting a few hoard wealth, power, and survival needs at the expense of the masses.

Re:Well duh.

[chuckugly]

Or just have well defined goals, work that needs done, and judge them on how well they actually get the work done. Novel, I know.

Re:Well duh.

[phayes]

NOT Illegal. Companies just need to get signed authorisation that there is a company policy for this kind of stuff and make sure that all employees sign it. Don't want to sign it? Access to the company networks is refused. Need network access to do your job? Sign the damn paper.

There are a few off-limits categories though: Banking & Health among them that must be whitelisted to avoid being swept into the monitoring.

Re:Well duh.

[AmiMoJo]

In the EU you can't be forced to sign away your basic rights like that. Giving up basic rights to keep your job is not considered a choice anyone should have to make.

Re: Well duh.

[blackomegax]

Ah yes, the amazing soviet ability to kill 80 million people but have a population growth in the millions. When will you idiots cease using that silly straw man?

Re: Well duh.

[Maritz]

In France they passed a law that workers aren't allowed to answer emails at home outside of office hours. You think they'll allow this? LOL.

In Europe, you take a job and work for an employer. You don't have to bend over and pull your fucking cheeks apart like a yank does.

No citation fucking needed.

Re:Well duh.

[Maritz]

People more accustomed to the american indentured servitude model are always confused by the idea that employees in europe are not utterly powerless like they are.

Re:Well duh.

[Maritz]

Yeah because that's your two options. Hire people and not have them produce anything, or hire people and stick a camera in their fucking face.

Productive employees are employees that are treated like fucking adults. Treat them like children and they act like children. You won't understand that because the american employment model is fucked in the head.

Re: Well duh.

[AmiMoJo]

The same could be said of capitalist utopia.

Re:Well duh.

[TimothyHollins]

That only works in the US. In the EU, strange as it may seem, the law is the law. You cannot sign away your rights (because in the EU your rights are your rights), nor can you give anyone permission to do something which is illegal. Because, and I'm surprised I need to say this again, in the EU anything illegal is in fact illegal.

With this in mind, guess why there aren't any "forced arbitration" clauses in European EULAs.

Re:Well duh.

[realxmp]

In the UK this would come under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and the Human Rights Act. RIPA is a criminal act and there are criminal sanctions for violating it, not something you can waive with a civil contract. Governments like to keep surveillance powers to themselves, there is an exception so you can monitor network traffic to debug network issues or check someone's mailbox for business related email (say whilst they're out of the office) but routine snooping like this would not fly under any of the exceptions to date.

Re:Well duh.

[AmiMoJo]

Yes, you can be asked to agree to conduct yourself a certain way on the network, but unless they have a really good reason to target you specifically they can't just start keylogging your computer. This has been established in court.

Re:Well duh.

[torkus]

Internet Content Filtering is not, at all, the same thing as key logging/monitoring social media posts, etc.

As someone who ALSO works in a heavily regulated, international company with several offices in the EU, I can absolutely say that laws regarding data privacy apply and cannot be signed away in virtually any case. We have the typical american "we will watch/read/etc. anything, anytime, for any (or no) reason whatsoever" for our US staff but EU staff are exempted from the whole thing. Heck, I remember jumping through hoops for explicit per-use permission to access in boxes to help users clean up when they went over quota. Permission from the employee - not HR, not legal, not my boss, not the CTO but the individual employee and no one else could agree on their behalf.

Rubbish

[Anonymous Coward]

None of this is necessary. What's necessary is to set goals and then assess whether the goals are being achieved. If workers are on the clock, then you probably don't want them billing you if they're doing unrelated tasks. However, a good manager should have some idea how long tasks ought to take and be able to determine if the workers aren't productive. The surveillance is completely unnecessary. However, they are right about one thing. Just like Big Brother players, you tend to forget the surveillance is there after a few days.

Re:Rubbish

[olsmeister]

Ahhh, spotted the flaw in your logic immediately. You said 'good manager'. A good manager wouldn't use something like this.

Re:Rubbish

[retchdog]

yeah but "good managers" cost even more than good workers. this way, you can save that money by hiring shitty managers to just keep an eye on the temps' Voight-Kampff retinal-engagement score and pass the savings on to the customers^W shareholders. it's a no-brainer, really.

Re:Rubbish

[arth1]

A panopticon approach penalizes some of the best workers.
Those who can do more in less time get penalized for "goofing off" when taking the breaks which is what makes them capable of doing more and better work in the first place. While someone who works slower but all the time is seen as more productive, even if doing less, or not getting a "mind clear" between tasks.
Employers need to realize that they don't get to dictate every aspect of a person's life while at work - they're not slaves. They buy their work. If two people do the same work by the same company deadline, they deserve the same pay. If one finishes early and then goofs off, or can multitask and do his job just as well or better while at the same time reading news, that doesn't hurt the company.
If the company wants more work because the employee appears to have spare time, they need to negotiate that with a proportionally higher pay compared to other, slower workers. Not just crack the whip, or the best workers will leave and you end up with the worst.

 

This doesn't work for software development

[nickjj]

A lot of freelance platforms have been doing this for years but it's not a reasonable solution.

You can't measure development productivity based on trackable "focus" and "intensity" scores because a lot of that happens inside of your brain.

I might decide to just stop what I'm doing and do 50 push ups while thinking about a problem, and then afterwards spend 10 minutes doing nothing from a camera's POV. In my mind, I'm churning through really complex data models and trying to make sense of it all which is absolutely focusing on the work at hand.

Re:This doesn't work for software development

[Baron_Yam]

I still solve a lot of problems off the clock, usually while on a drive when (other than attention required for driving) my mind can wander. I can spend hours at my desk, extremely focused, but go around in circles... and then during a trip to a satellite office the answer will come to me.

Find a way to measure that!

Much like wait and call timers for telemarketing firms (and shitty customer service cube farms), these systems are not for good companies... they're for shitty companies paying shitty wages for basic monkey work, and they want to make sure the monkeys are mashing keys.

Re:Too complicated

[Gilgaron]

I think this is partly because they probably don't care about a certain amount of slacking off if you're productive enough overall. Alternatively maybe they know then you'd just use your phone if it was blocked so this way they get you to hang yourself...

Not no, but hell no!

[CustomBuild]

If the summary is accurate, these people have lost their mind. My worst job was a call center position where you actually had to raise your hand for a restroom break. To compound the issue, you logged off the soft phone for the break and the whole process was timed. You were given 10 minutes total for an entire shift, for a set of restroom breaks. This bs reminds me of that behavior, and I share the store to remind people why they should leave abusive positions. Education is power, and this wasn't the last position where I shared my opinion, on the way out the door.

Bad, bad idea

[Rastl]

Crossover’s Sanjeev Patni insists that workers get over the initial self-consciousness after a few days and accept the need for such monitoring as they do CCTV in shopping malls.

“The response is ‘OK, I’m being monitored, but if the company is paying for my time how does it matter if it’s recording what I’m doing? It’s only for my betterment,’” he said

.

Bull pucky. Of course he's going to say that. He's the one trying to sell his product. And what employee is going to be honest and say "You're being a complete and utter dick for using this product." when they don't have their next gig already lined up?

If I'm a freelancer and find out I'm going to be subject to measurement by keystrokes and random photographs then there's no way I'm taking that job. And I'll make sure to tell every other freelancer I know that this company is a bunch of controlling jerkwads.

I have no issue with the company I work for monitoring and limiting internet access, keeping my company email on their server, etc. That's their right and their systems. But this is beyond the pale. Some random algorithm is telling my employer how 'productive' I am.

If you can't trust your employees then hire new ones. If you can't trust yourself to manage a remote work force then get a job that has butts in seats so you can swagger through your drones and feel that you're providing leadership.

If you can't tell I think this is a very poor solution to a niche problem.

This kind of monitoring is for salary fraud only

[tietokone-olmi]

The way the scam works is that whenever the Automated System says you weren't lined up correctly for your 10-minute mugshot, or your hands weren't on the keyboard for a large enough percent of the time, or something along those lines, the company docks your pay for that period. (Possibly also the one afterward.) Obviously the company doesn't reject the work done during that time, oh no -- that's for free.

And good luck having that decision reviewed: your gig will be up as soon as you say "lawsuit". Any internal mechanism for the same goal will massively favour the employer.

It's an IT sweatshop tool, that's what it is. No surprise that the proponent is subcontinental.