December 10, 2021
The use of monitoring technologies to keep a close eye on workers can be a wrong move to take thanks to some effect it has on employees. These effects include workers having the feeling that they are not trusted or loved by the company, mental trauma to workers” well-being, and a host of other negative consequences.
During the pandemic, remote work saw a spike in adoption. However, as the number of remote workplaces increased, so did the number of remote workers were monitored also increased as companies introduced “quick and dirty” surveillance apps.
Kirstie Ball, who published a report on the trend, explained: “One of the difficulties with remote working is that a lot of people were dropped into remote working very quickly. In the pandemic, your house was everything. It was where you worshipped, it was where you worked and your school. If you drop invasive monitoring on top of all that, it’s just going to be devastating to people when they don’t have support and are isolated in their homes.”
The European Commission’s Joint Research Council (JRC) also noted that surveillance through the ‘datafication’ of work has become more ubiquitous, a process in which pay is aggregated based on algorithms used to monitor workers.
For more information read the original story in ZDNet.
