Demand For Employee Surveillance Increased As Workers Transitioned To Home Working (zdnet.com) 47
An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: A new study shows that the demand for employee surveillance software was up 55% in June 2020 compared to the pre-pandemic average. From webcam access to random screenshot monitoring, these surveillance software products can record almost everything an employee does on their computer. VPN review website Top10VPN used its global monitoring data to analyze over 200 terms related to employee surveillance software. It took into account both generic and brand-specific queries for its study which compared searches during March-May 2020 with internet searches in the preceding year. Global demand for employee monitoring software increased by 108% in April, and 70% in May 2020 compared with searches carried out the preceding year. Queries for "How to monitor employees working from home" increased by 1,705% in April and 652% in May 2020 compared with searches carried out the preceding year.
The surge in popularity of such an open-ended phrase like this reveals how unprepared many companies were for the abrupt shift to mass home-working. The most popular surveillance tools are Time Doctor, Hubstaff, and FlexiSPY. The tools with the biggest increase in demand include Teramind, DeskTime, Kickidler, and Time Doctor, with interest for the latter tripling compared to the pre-pandemic levels. The top three tools account for almost 60% of global demand in surveillance software because of the range of features offered. The radical shift away from office-working has clearly made employers nervous about a reduction in productivity and its potential impact on their business. Greater surveillance, however, may actually reduce long-term productivity. Your boss watching your every move may make you less productive in the long run and could significantly impact your feelings about the company itself.
The surge in popularity of such an open-ended phrase like this reveals how unprepared many companies were for the abrupt shift to mass home-working. The most popular surveillance tools are Time Doctor, Hubstaff, and FlexiSPY. The tools with the biggest increase in demand include Teramind, DeskTime, Kickidler, and Time Doctor, with interest for the latter tripling compared to the pre-pandemic levels. The top three tools account for almost 60% of global demand in surveillance software because of the range of features offered. The radical shift away from office-working has clearly made employers nervous about a reduction in productivity and its potential impact on their business. Greater surveillance, however, may actually reduce long-term productivity. Your boss watching your every move may make you less productive in the long run and could significantly impact your feelings about the company itself.
Wrong Metric (Score:5, Insightful)
Rather than worrying about whether your staff members are checking Facebook on company time, why aren't companies set up proper performance metrics. If you have a rock star employee who can get the project done on time and on budget, does it matter? If they're a shitty employee who doesn't get work done or does it badly, they were probably doing it before the pandemic. Spying on your employees, unless it's necessary due to security issues, just encourages clock punching and does nothing for productivity.
Re:Wrong Metric (Score:5, Interesting)
Because management is a bunch of MBAs with zero experience building anything useful. They have no idea if something takes 5 minutes of work or 10 days. The only way they can feel assured they are getting optimal productivity is by making sure the employee is busy.
Re:Wrong Metric (Score:5, Insightful)
We were faced with this problem when most of the staff went home in April. I told my management team, some of which wanted some sort of virtual punch clock, or exhaustive diarization in the scheduling system, that that not only wouldn't maintain productivity, it probably would shit all over staff morale at a time when morale was already in the dumpster. I just set up metrics for staff; things that have to be done by noon or the end of the day, things that needed to be done by Wednesday or end of week, or whatever. I also encouraged staff to use their professional development funds which we make available, and use this slower time as a chance to beef up credentials or learn something new. We had some special projects, the kinds of things no one ever has time for, like completing or updating documentation and processes.
What I noticed is that a lot of people were actually logging in earlier in the morning, probably checking emails before they got going for the day. There was down time for some over the day, but some staff were actually logging in later in the day, sometimes even working until 6 or 7 in the evening. Essentially their work schedules got stretched out as the schedule started to match the other things they had to do; home school kids, get to the store, talk with family. But providing deadlines were met, I wasn't going to make them report their tasks in 15 minute increments or sweat it because they took an hour lunch. Sure, they probably did a little screwing around, but I figured their mental health and longevity as employees was more important than holding some sort of a hammer over their head.
As to security, we configured company laptops for everyone that are locked down tight. They can only access the RDP servers and nothing else. Nothing can be printed at home. Generally I don't think anyone wants to use their own PCs for company work, and for us it means we know the AV is up to date, security updates are flowing through, and if the thing breaks, we just hand them another one.
My view is that if you distrust your staff that much, you are either an unlucky manager, or a fucking terrible manager.
Re:Wrong Metric (Score:5, Insightful)
My view is that if you distrust your staff that much, you are either an unlucky manager, or a fucking terrible manager.
Or you could be an unlucky manager AND a terrible manager. :-)
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I have Karma, would upvote you more if I could, but I'd rather thank you for your pragmaticism. You're fortunate though, you work somewhere you can cull the underperforming employees. I work in Federal Government.
We started doing 50% telework. One week on site, one week off. When we started I had one co-worker tell me, "I treat my telework days like half days!" "NO! DON'T DO THAT, CLOSE MORE TICKETS THAN NORMAL! SHOW THEM THAT TELEWORK WORKS!"
Unfortunately this has fallen on many deaf ears. We use Serv
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I don't know where you live, so I might be wrong about your specific case. But in my country, government employees can be fired for doing a bad job, just like their colleagues in private industry. Sure, their managers have to do the paperwork first, and prove that they (management) have worked with the underperforming employee to try and improve their work. It just means that workers have a little more protection from a manager who is vindictive and/or lazy, which is a _good_ thing!
Oh, and there are plenty
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I'm retired military and a civil servant these days. I worked for DoD for about 7 years (moving to a DHS military sub-agency, and then to the best large agency to work for in the federal government).
You can deal with poor performers in the Fed gov (google "The Uncivil Servant" by Bill Wiley for a start), but most military leaders have no clue on how to deal with civilians so either treat them like military (bad move...leads to grievances, etc) or ignore the issues until they PCS.
My agency was very telework
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Thanks for that, I have a few friends I'm gonna buy this for.
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I was a manager for a few years. We never make up schedules randomly; we ask the workers how long they think a task will take. They're not always accurate, and from some there is immense pushback to not give an answer. I had one guy who honestly thinks that if he gives an estimate that he'll be punished if he takes longer than that. For myself as a non-manager, I hate having to do estimates, but I know why it's needed. You need to know when the product will be ready to ship for example, and combine the
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Sounds like that one guy was the victim of a bad manager at some point. That makes it harder for good managers to build trust later, a good reason for good managers to help bad managers improve or out the door.
I can understand the reluctance to give an estimate, too many people, no matter how much they swear they understand that it's just an estimate beforehand, treat it like a platinum plated guarantee.
I also understand why there is a legitimate need for some sort of ballpark estimate, hopefully more relia
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My experience is that people who are good at their jobs (that is, at producing stuff) get 'promoted' to management, which brings status, and better pay. But that promotion is a change in job. They may well lack the skills to be a good manager. Unless they acquire those skills, if they even can, you have just removed a productive employee and turned them into a bad manager. For which the company pays twice, in the loss of the good employe
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Managing rock stars is easy (give bonuses). And managing shitty employees is easy (fire them). It's the other 80% that this tool helps with.
Yes, a perfect manager would have all kinds of metrics set up (long in advance, of course, of the actual work needing to start). Just like a perfect programmer would never need to refactor code. But for those of us managers that aren't perfect, we rely on tools to help.
Re:Wrong Metric (Score:4, Insightful)
You don't need time management tracking for this, you can just look at how much was delivered. You can tell the unproductive workers easily because you can see how much or how little useful stuff was done. But beware of the busy-work buy who wastes tons of time on tasks that aren't all that important but which make it look like lots is being done if you just count lines of code or hours typing away. Ie, if a new task needs to be done and you now have to assign it to someone, every manager should have a good gut feel for who can do it properly and on time and who will end up causing a big clog in the system.
Re:Wrong Metric (Score:4, Insightful)
How do these tools help?
"Jim logged on half an hour early but went idle for 40 minutes from 9.34am, then checked email and went idle again until just before lunch time."
So fucking what? Jim was sat in the garden thinking, and in the afternoon put together the two page summary of an idea that in three years time will be your company's biggest earner.
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That would be correct if everyone was an independent contractor bidding on projects. Then you can choose the most efficient bid and if they fail you won't have to pay. But when you have an employee and you assign them something you are clueless about how to do, your only choice to see that they are doing something work related. Of course if you hired a clueless employee most of that time would be on stack overflow.
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I get phone calls a few times a week asking questions about projects. When someone doesn't know, I encourage them to ask. That's how I really know they're plugged in.
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And that's why many maintain that a manager needs to have at least a decent clue how to do the work of the people being managed.
Re:Wrong Metric (Score:4, Insightful)
Even worse, the really good employees leave, because they can.
The ones that are left are just good enough not to be eligible for termination for cause, and they're really good at not being eligible for termination for cause.
Policies like this fill companies with mediocrity. I've done work for companies like this as a contractor and you can almost smell it in the air. The employees have this look of defeat about them. The managers almost always act like they're super happy with the outcome but you can tell they're just grateful to be one step above slave.
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Oblig. xkcd [xkcd.com]
That would be nice if everything had easy metrics (Score:3)
First I'll say flat out - I don't like these monitoring tools, generally. I suppose maybe there is some use case for them, but generally I don't think they are a good idea.
It sure would be nice if the performance and productivity of every job could be objectively measured. Unfortunately, it can't. Programmers, for example. I've yet to hear of any metric for programmers that is the slightest bit useful.
We can measure bad but busy programmers vs good ones by lines of code. Good programmers write a table loo
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Re: Wrong Metric (Score:2)
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I'm so glad to have management that gets this.
Did not need anything new. Same agile metrics we just use anyway. Nothing changed (actually, our velocity went UP), our releases are still getting out on time and nobody is bothering to waste money on crap we don't need.
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It's very complicated. On the one hand, I agree that as long as you get the job done for the price/wage you agreed on is good.
On the other hand, given the chance to observe and judge, a lot of us do.
Imagine you hire a home renovator to redo your kitchen. You pay them the agreed upon $10000 and they say it will be done in 2 weeks. They get it done on time and on budget. All good, you might think.
Not imagine you work from home and get to see them working. You get to see them take breaks, take off for long lun
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If you notice that specific tasks are taking less time for everyone on the team, then the problem is with your metric, and you should adjust. If it is was single person who seems to be able to do things more quickly, well, then, that person clearly has some talent or unique set of skills. In that case, maybe you should find things that challenge that person. But that's the optimist in me, thinking that in general people don't want to screw their employer. It happens, and it has happened under my watch, but
Time for an UNION! (Score:2)
Time for an UNION!
BS time tracking and metrics do not work.
call centers with bad metrics = poor CS (Score:3)
call centers with bad metrics = poor CS
When it's more about call times vs fixing issues then the CS sucks.
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less/more (Score:2)
No so much:
> The radical shift away from office-working has clearly made employers nervous about a reduction in productivity and its potential impact on their business.
But rather:
> The radical decrease in productivity in 2020 has clearly made employers nervous about a reduction in productivity and its potential impact on their business.
How about a new app that simulates work (Score:1)
Legality ? (Score:2)
I'd be curious to know which countries these are. In much of the developed world [i.e. not the US] this kind of monitoring is highly illegal and breaks numerous privacy laws.
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I'd be curious to know which countries these are. In much of the developed world [i.e. not the US] this kind of monitoring is highly illegal and breaks numerous privacy laws.
A challenge under privacy legislation would likely fail in Canada and the USA, and I suspect this could be a grey area even in Europe. Labour laws generally allow employers some fairly broad boundaries when it comes to monitoring work production, and workplace behaviour.
It would be interesting to see which side the courts would rule: privacy laws or labour laws.
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Not a fan of this. To me, it says "we know you're a professional, with multiple degrees and a track record with us, but we still don't trust you". For background, I'm an experienced electrical engineer doing embedded and system design, having worked for this employer for a while (so my management knows what I do and how I work).
My company has the ability to do this kind of monitoring,(using Hubstaff), but to my knowledge they are not using it on me. I *believe* they need to tell me if they do, but it's prob
Cat and Mouse game (Score:3)
The moment I learn you don't trust me enough to get the work done, is the day I cease getting the work done.
( You could fire me I suppose, but then you'll be left with folks who can't get the work done if their life depended on it. So choose wisely. )
Instead, I'll spend my time writing a lovely little application that automatically does all the things you're looking for with your shiny & new metric spy machine.
Reads corporate email ? Check.
Visits random corporate web pages ? Check.
Writes official looking code all day long at human typing speeds ? Check.
Watch all the remote connections made to my computer and shut them down at random ? Check.
Make VOIP calls across my soft-phone to multiple corporate numbers all day long ? Check.
Types the letters " F " and " U " 37,383,128 times a day ? Check.
Bring a router / firewall to work and put it between your network and my laptop ? ( Can't be too safe yanno ) Check.
This list can go on and on and ON, but you get the picture.
Tell me what needs to be done.
Tell me when it needs to be done.
Then leave me the F alone and let me get it done.
Simple as that.
Re: Cat and Mouse game (Score:2)
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Figured something like this would happen (Score:2)
For fuck's sake judge productivity on actual productivity instead of whether
3sotweb (Score:1)
Decoration site design (Score:1)
If you don't trust your staff... (Score:2)
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bad managers (Score:2)