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How Employers Track Their Workers

theatlantic.com

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Re: How Employers Track Their Workers

#11

Post by joewee »

I've never seen an employee monitoring system that's built to the benefit of the employee. But nothing a company does it to the benefit of the employee. HR isn't there to help employees, HR is primarily a risk mitigation and compliance department. Who would assume employee monitoring systems are any different?

"They try to never speak up, never stick out, do nothing that might get noticed by management. This leads to a vicious cycle, whereby management grows more suspicious and feels justified in ratcheting up the surveillance."

This is the most troubling thing about surveillance, it changes peoples behavior. The people who implement these systems don't understand the psychology of surveillance, so they use the change in behavior as a indicator of increased risk. Its a vicious cycle.

Re: How Employers Track Their Workers

#12

Post by twblalock »

ecnahc515 wrote: post #2

How ubiquitous is this for TSA? I hear people on hackernews complain about theft from the TSA every so often, but according to this, they're being recorded so it shouldn't happen, or if it does, they should be able to prove if it was stolen by TSA. Are people just blaming TSA for their lost things, is TSA covering up thefts that they know are happening, or what?

If they are being recorded, I doubt the cameras cover every possible angle. People figure out where the blind spots are.

Re: How Employers Track Their Workers

#13

Post by jsoc815 »

> “a culture where … people more often alter their behavior to suit machines and work with them, rather than the other way around,” and that this tends to erode their sense of “agency.” That is, the constant surveillance of employees diminishes their capacity to operate as independent thinkers and actors.

Isn't this the point? At least until the people can be replaced? Personally, can't wait to see the autonomous robots attempts to subvert the system. That should be interesting.

Re: How Employers Track Their Workers

#14

Post by jsoc815 »

ecnahc515 wrote: post #2

How ubiquitous is this for TSA? I hear people on hackernews complain about theft from the TSA every so often, but according to this, they're being recorded so it shouldn't happen, or if it does, they should be able to prove if it was stolen by TSA. Are people just blaming TSA for their lost things, is TSA covering up thefts that they know are happening, or what?

Even if they are recording everything, there are few people who will want to spend the time watching the recordings. I've been through this a few times in different places. People make up all sorts of excuses for why they can't access the surveillance record(s), that's if they even really have them.

Re: How Employers Track Their Workers

#15

Post by toomanybeersies »

joewee wrote: post #11

I've never seen an employee monitoring system that's built to the benefit of the employee. But nothing a company does it to the benefit of the employee. HR isn't there to help employees, HR is primarily a risk mitigation and compliance department. Who would assume employee monitoring systems are any different? "They try to never speak up, never stick out, do nothing that might get noticed by management. This leads to…

> But nothing a company does it to the benefit of the employee

This isn't a feature intrinsic to companies, but rather a relatively recent social norm. There are still a few companies that do look after their employees, and do things to the benefit of their employees. They aren't very common though, usually it's smaller (often family run) businesses, and often a physical trade rather than an office job.

Re: How Employers Track Their Workers

#17

Post by Terr_ »

devoply wrote: post #4

These type of "tools" are used by low-lives to control people so that they feel that they have some sense of control over people. In terms of getting good hard-working motivated people to work for you, this sort of technology does exactly the opposite.

It makes me think of a piece from Peopleware (1987):

> Historians long ago formed an abstraction about different theories of value: The Spanish Theory, for one, held that only a fixed amount of value existed on earth, and therefore the path to the accumulation of wealth was to learn to extract it more efficiently from the soil or from people’s backs. Then there was the English Theory that held that value could be created through ingenuity and technology. [...]

> The Spanish Theory of Value is alive and well among managers everywhere. You see that whenever they talk about productivity. Productivity ought to mean achieving more in an hour of work, but all too often it has come to mean extracting more for an hour of pay. There is a large difference. The Spanish Theory managers dream of attaining new productivity levels through the simple mechanism of unpaid overtime.

Re: How Employers Track Their Workers

#18

Post by dawnerd »

Tade0 wrote: post #7
gorpomon wrote: post #3

Pretty disgusting stuff. There are plenty of places in the world where a video camera provides relief and safety, but work is rarely one. The engineers building this tech should be ashamed, they grew up to be the bad guys.

A few years back a guy I knew from college wanted to have a meeting with me regarding a "business opportunity". He pitched me an idea for a system that would essentially spy on IT contractors through the webcam during work. Fortunately his budget was laughably small and my participation out of the question so he never went through with this. He is known for being utterly shameless but I guess what other kind of perso…

Doesn't upwork and other freelance style sites monitor by webcam/screencapture as an option?

Re: How Employers Track Their Workers

#19

Post by joewee »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #15
joewee wrote: post #11

I've never seen an employee monitoring system that's built to the benefit of the employee. But nothing a company does it to the benefit of the employee. HR isn't there to help employees, HR is primarily a risk mitigation and compliance department. Who would assume employee monitoring systems are any different? "They try to never speak up, never stick out, do nothing that might get noticed by management. This leads to…

> But nothing a company does it to the benefit of the employee This isn't a feature intrinsic to companies, but rather a relatively recent social norm. There are still a few companies that do look after their employees, and do things to the benefit of their employees. They aren't very common though, usually it's smaller (often family run) businesses, and often a physical trade rather than an office job.

True, their are companies that have founding principles that are employee friendly, but once you have an official HR role, their job is the complete opposite. Similarly, corporate counsel is responsible to the corporate entity (are companies people?), even if that means recommending removal of the founder. A organization with employee friendly values has leadership willing to challenge HR and Legal, but that means a majority of the leadership has to be onboard. So yes, family owned businesses, tightly controlled/owned businesses probably fall into that category.

Re: How Employers Track Their Workers

#20

Post by Tade0 »

dawnerd wrote: post #18
Tade0 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few years back a guy I knew from college wanted to have a meeting with me regarding a "business opportunity". He pitched me an idea for a system that would essentially spy on IT contractors through the webcam during work. Fortunately his budget was laughably small and my participation out of the question so he never went through with this. He is known for being utterly shameless but I guess what other kind of perso…

Doesn't upwork and other freelance style sites monitor by webcam/screencapture as an option?

This man is not known for having original ideas either.
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