A Third of UK Firms Using 'Bossware' To Monitor Workers' Activity, Survey Reveals (theguardian.com) 23
A third of UK employers are using "bossware" technology to track workers' activity with the most common methods including monitoring emails and web browsing. From a report: Private companies are most likely to deploy in-work surveillance and one in seven employers are recording or reviewing screen activity, according to a UK-wide survey that estimates the extent of office snooping.
The findings, shared with the Guardian by the Chartered Management Institute (CMI), are based on responses from hundreds of UK managers and suggest there has been a recent growth in computerised work surveillance. In 2023, less than a fifth of people thought they were being monitored by an employer, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) found. The finding that about a third of managers report their organisations are monitoring workers' online activities on employer-owned devices is probably an underestimate, as roughly the same proportion said they don't know what tracking their organisations do.
Many monitoring systems are aimed at preventing insider threats and safeguarding sensitive information as well as detecting productivity dips. But the trend appears to be causing unease. A large minority of managers are opposed to the practice, saying it undermines trust with staff and invades their personal privacy, the CMI found.
The findings, shared with the Guardian by the Chartered Management Institute (CMI), are based on responses from hundreds of UK managers and suggest there has been a recent growth in computerised work surveillance. In 2023, less than a fifth of people thought they were being monitored by an employer, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) found. The finding that about a third of managers report their organisations are monitoring workers' online activities on employer-owned devices is probably an underestimate, as roughly the same proportion said they don't know what tracking their organisations do.
Many monitoring systems are aimed at preventing insider threats and safeguarding sensitive information as well as detecting productivity dips. But the trend appears to be causing unease. A large minority of managers are opposed to the practice, saying it undermines trust with staff and invades their personal privacy, the CMI found.
Orwellian (Score:1)
Dear lord, that's straight up Orwellian! There needs to be pushback. Who can work in a panopticon? That's going to give people anxiety and they will only end up getting burnt out and worn down and make more mistakes.
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yeah I don't know why people put up with this shit
I started a new job recently - requested a laptop with a geforce GPU so I could finally play BG3, I leave it in the background and have a fight every now and then. Conversely I spent most of the weekend trying to diagnose Kubernetes errors.
I could definitely get paid more elsewhere but a culture of trust and respect is priceless to me. YMMV.
Of course there's nothing to worry about here (Score:2)
Of course you're doing your work properly, aren't you? (Obligatory joke.)
And not looking at Slashdot from the office! (Score:2)
Dang. My timing is off again.
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Well, for one you'd have to be pretty hard to distract. No ADD folks, seeing everything means seeing all those distractingly shiny things.
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Who can work in a panopticon?
Prison officers?
Does this mean the return of the "Boss Key"? (Score:2)
Copilot as big brother? (Score:5, Interesting)
Since MS is baking copilot into everything, I wonder how long until they weaponize copilot like this. Years ago when they had Delve in O365, I had a manager using that to keep track of the documentation I was working on and we got into a pretty nasty argument when he was critiquing a doc that was in the ROUGH DRAFTS folder because... you know... it wasn't completed... because... it was a rough draft.
It wouldn't take much for them to use copilot to aggregate the metrics with your emails received/sent, reading/scrolling time on an email, various docs, and Teams messages. That data could be used to infer how "busy" (idle?) you are.
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Congrats! You've just discovered the real use case for Windows Recall.
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It'd probably illegal in the UK. That kind of constant monitoring would need a very strong justification.
Panopticon in the Age of Digital Media (Score:2)
“The social technologies we see in use today are fundamentally panoptical – the architecture of participation is inherently an architecture of surveillance.” – Joshua-Michéle Ross
AI (Score:2)
Ha, my AI Employeeware stays one-step ahead of the Bossware. I might lose the Boss Fight though, Bossware can always land a critical hit.
Bossware and compliance... (Score:2)
I've encountered this through the years at IT. Some manager thinks bossware is a good thing. I look at the software, and almost always it is something that doesn't store any of its keylogs or screenshots encrypted... which means that if one is working in any environment that requires compliance, something like this can get an authority to operate yanked. Always cracks me up that software which should be at a security level at or above everything else is usually so poorly written, it can't get vetted by a
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The solution is to require managers to do actual work with 20% of their time (or even 10% might be enough). If they can't do it, then they aren't qualified to manage in the industry.
Oh dear (Score:2)
You know that computer you're using at work, during work's time, is to do your fucking work on? It's not your gaming/media device - that's at home, to be used in your time.
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Yes, and this is all due to COVID and WFH (work from home).
There was a storm of angst in the C-suite, which made funding and development of the software possible.
Re: Oh dear (Score:2)