• Replies 11 replies
  • Subscribers 3 subscribers
  • Views 2721 views
  • Users 0 members are here
Options
Related

Is your boss watching you?

Derek Tong

Are 'mind-reading' hats or helmets for workers the top of a very slippery slope when it comes to workplace monitoring and privacy abuse? https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/04/30/mind-reading-tech-used-monitor-chinese-workers-emotions/ Not only does constant monitoring have huge potential to cause stress, any benefits are suspect and the whole process dehumanises workers even further. There are better ways to find out how your employees are feeling and certainly better ways to engage the workforce and lift productivity.

While the article highlights a pretty extreme example, how happy are you with the way your organisation approaches workplace monitoring?

Parents
  • Hi Derek, I like both this article in the telegraph and one suggested by Steve Bridger in the Guardian.

    I am currently doing my Masters assignment on whether technological advances and privacy rights can work together to create true trust and data confidence in the workplace and what is the relevance of Article 8 thereto. I would have liked to have heard your opinion on it from the point of view of data protection laws in the UK and whether GDPR will improve privacy rights in this area or if there are still potential weaknesses.
  • in reply to sinead

    I worked in a place once where it felt like the HR manager did have eyes and spies everywhere! She'd talk to me (and indeed others) and repeat back things we'd said in another part of the building, well away from her. Another time, I wasn't feeling well and went outside for a few minutes to get some fresh air. She saw me go out, even though her office was on the other side of the building. Another time I was standing in the office, about to go out to make the tea but lingering as myself and 2 colleagues were having a (work related) discussion. The manager was sitting across the hallway in the board room and could see into our office. She's emailed my colleague to say she could see me standing there chatting! Quite what point she wished to make I dont know, given I could have sat down and carried on, and it was work related anyway (not that she would have known the topic). But to email one of the others instead of just have a quiet word to me later? (If it even really needed that!) She had also installed on her arrival a finger print clocking in and out machine that all staff (including office professionals and even the directrors) were to use! And of course it was her who could see the times people came and went at.

    It was all a bit creepy and I was glad when I moved on. :-) 

    I think people like that would be very much interested in the new technology and is exactly why it fills me with horror. 

  • in reply to William
    My Husband worked somewhere similar. They had CCTV in the office area where it wasn't necessary. The Director would call my Husband the minute he started to clear his desk for the day and be called in for nothing that couldn't have been dealt with earlier in the day. They eventually employed a HR professional, who immediately asked for the CCTV in non essential areas to be removed. This didn't happen and the HR professional left the business very quickly, as well as my Husband!
Reply
  • in reply to William
    My Husband worked somewhere similar. They had CCTV in the office area where it wasn't necessary. The Director would call my Husband the minute he started to clear his desk for the day and be called in for nothing that couldn't have been dealt with earlier in the day. They eventually employed a HR professional, who immediately asked for the CCTV in non essential areas to be removed. This didn't happen and the HR professional left the business very quickly, as well as my Husband!
Children
No Data