A recently released study in the UK points to increased surveillance in the workplace, a trend that some managers claim to harm confidence between bosses and staff.
One third of employers in the UK is using “bossware”To monitor the activity of workers, the most common practices being the surveillance of Emails and navigation Na Internet.
As private companies They are the ones that resort to surveillance at the workplace and, according to a national inquiry, about one in seven employers is recording or reviewing the activity on workers’ scraps, in an estimate of the dimension of surveillance in office context.
The results, which were shared with the Chartered Management Institute (), are based on Answers from hundreds of managers British and suggest that there has been a recent growth digital work monitoring.
Em 2023, Less than 1/5 of the workers believed to be watched by the employer. The fact that about 173 of managers claim that their organizations monitor the online activity of workers on the company’s devices may even be underestimatedsince a similar proportion says it does not know what kind of screening is done.
Many of these surveillance systems aim to prevent internal threats and protect sensitive information as well as detect productivity breaks.
But The trend seems to be generating discomfortthe. Almost half of the managers are opposed to practice, considering that Mina Confidence between leaders and employees and invades personal privacy, according to the CMI.
A manager of an insurance company, who is developing AI systems to monitor the activity on workers’ screen and evaluate its performance, said that the Guardian that the idea was “unsettling”.
“Don’t you trust employees to do their job and are thinking about replacing them with Ia?” He asked.
One of the applications used to watch the activity of employees offers reports on “Inactive time”, “productivity screening”use of social networks or unauthorized AI tools, as well as “real -time information about employee behavior, Including Screen Capturesscreen video recordings, Key registration and use of applications”.
In response to the study conclusions, ICO stressed that employers “have to Inform workers about natureextension and reasons for monitoring ”and warned that excessive surveillance“ can compromise privacy, especially in remote work ”. The entity also warned that“ it will take action if necessary ”.
Last year, ICO prevented the outsourcing company Serco from using facial recognition and fingerprint reading to control the assiduity of workers in a chain of sports centers.
According to the CMI, the monitoring is often boiled down to ensure that it is not being Accessed improper content. However, the institution warns that “there is a long term impact when it is felt that there is um ‘Big Brother’ a vigiar”.
“If used, it is absolutely crucial that employers are transparentotherwise this will create serious problems at the level of privacy and data protection, ”says Petra WiltonDirector of Policies and External Affairs of the CMI.
Other recent examples of work surveillance technology include HSBC plans to Install a large number of security cameras and biometric readers who use Palm impressions of the hand to access the zones of the bank’s new headquarters in London.
PWC consultant recently introduced a “traffic light” system that uses access card data and wifi calls to verify that employees meet the requirement of go to the office at least three days per weekthe. A PWC spokesman said the system was “accepted by the overwhelming majority workers ”.
An old picture of an anonymous public transport authority described the surveillance to which he was subject, including his online calendar, as “intrusive and pure harassment”.
“Started with vigilance and ended me outso angry it was, ”he said.
One in six managers also told CMI investigators that he would consider Search for another job If your organization began to monitor the online activity of workers on the company’s devices.
Among managers who knew that their organizations were surveillance, 35% said that were monitoring emails. Overall, control of start and ending hours and systems access was the most common form of surveillance.
The study revealed that 53% of managers support monitoring online activity of workers on company devices.
However, 42% of managers oppose themselvesespecially because they believe that practice undermines confidence, but also because they consider that does not improve performance and can be misused or lead to wrong judgments and unfair disciplinary actions.
