The future of monitoring
How far can it go?
Prior to the shift to our now hybrid way of working, many of us (myself included) were unaware of the technologies that could be used to monitor how employees worked. It seemed that the unluckiest of us had either bosses who liked to micromanage our tasks or keep tabs of bathroom breaks.
Ash, at a prior workplace, actually had to fill in a timesheet as a consultant, so managers could track what each employee was doing. The organisation framed it as a resource management tool, however, Ash and his fellow consultants quickly grew frustrated at the detail in which they had to account for every minute of their work week.
With the move to remote work, there was a steady drip of stories about the lengths organisations went to in order to keep tabs on their employees. Sales in monitoring software increased exponentially, with over 60% of remote employees in one survey being monitored in some way or another.
Personally, as my own work went remote, I was one of the lucky ones. I only had to share my daily work and log in and log out by writing messages on a team messaging channel. Although I found even that frustrating, it is nothing compared to some of these rather wild stories:
There was the boss that kept track of employees through keystrokes and mouse movements.
There is also Sneek, a video service which is always on, which has the ability to snap employees through their webcams as they work from home. Some were photographed every one-to-five minutes in order to see if they were working or not.
Then there is Barclays, a major bank, that even went so far as to piloting software which could use webcams to keep track of the breaks employees take.
What's worse is that all of these applications or software are or can be made invisible, ensuring workers remain unaware of their presence.
While this all sounds invasive, and frankly horrible, I believe that with developing technology it could potentially be much worse.
During research for my dissertation on neuroscience in education, I came across research currently being done on brainwaves (see previous article on hyperscanning). This research studied how teachers and students brains could become “connected”, with better connection leading to better learning outcomes!
While this is not a way to ensure someone is paying attention, as the science and understanding behind it still has a long way to go, one of my first thoughts was that this technology could easily be next in the line of creepy employee or student monitoring.
I’ll provide a somewhat dystopian example: as you start your workday, along with webcam and keystroke monitoring, you have to wear a device which measures your brainwaves. Your day starts off with an online meeting, where there is someone making sure that everyone is paying attention by measuring appropriate levels of brainwave "connection" with whoever is speaking at the meeting.
The ethical concerns are obvious, including the invasion of privacy and personal freedom. However, as we have seen with employee monitoring during the pandemic, this does not seem like a key consideration for organisations when deciding to implement such technology. How far will some go?
There are clearly less invasive ways to motivate people (how about trust?!), as opposed to resorting to this degree of monitoring.