Workplace surveillance is one subject that simply can’t stay out of the news. Somewhere, everywhere, it finds its way into the news in employee court cases, dissatisfied privacy advocates, hype, and practical delivery issues.
Workplace surveillance has expanded to become a truly vast range of applications, notably including remote surveillance during the pandemic. A simple search of workplace surveillance software will bring up a vast range of suppliers. Product ranges include everything from basic employee data to productivity coaching and more.
It’s easy to say that workplace surveillance is simple exploitation of employer paranoia. That’s not quite, or in some security regards, anything like the case. The fact remains that workplace surveillance can be bureaucratic, inept, and in some cases just plain wrong.
The myths of easy management are crashing like zeppelins, usually in courts. There are too many myths, and they’re much like moths, flying around hot topics. Do the maths, and you’ll see the problems with the myths.
Another myth is that workplace surveillance is capable of managing anyone or anything. We’ll discuss that below, but it’s a hell of a risk for managers to assume it can. In practice, a dashboard and some arbitrarily-defined floating data can hardly equate to adequate management resources if you’re running a hot dog stand.
Workplace surveillance has also become a major talking point for critics across the entire spectrum of operations. Criticism is no longer purely theoretical; much of the criticism is coming from observed failures.
The usual list of complaints includes:
- The Algorithm: An algorithm is by definition a formula. In terms of workplace surveillance, this is a possible legally contentious aggregation of employee data statistics. It’s quite easy to put together a collection of KPIs, time usage data, CCTV footage, and get exactly the wrong answer.
- Productivity metrics: “Productivity” is an interesting expression in the modern workplace. In terms of workplace surveillance data, it can be farcical, even in principle. For instance – A sales phone call worth $200 million can easily be just a phone call for data purposes. Real value productivity may not show up at all in this form on workplace surveillance metrics.
- Time usage: This is an interesting one. Experienced people tend to do things much faster and much more efficiently. On face value, however, a person glued to their desks doing much less will look better on workplace surveillance basic statistics.
- Employee movements: Whatever else the TV show Big Brother may be, it has never been called a business model, let alone a good business model. For security purposes, employee movement monitoring makes sense. For the sake of following people around in those exciting epic journeys from the desk to the bathroom, it makes no sense at all. In some workplaces, notably Amazon, workplace surveillance is said to be draconian and extremely heavy-handed. …To the point of one of the world’s highest employee turnovers, allegedly. That means one of the world’s major employers is wasting a lot of time and effort seriously antagonizing its own employees.
- Preventing crime: While basic surveillance may prevent petty theft, it cannot possibly prevent fraud, embezzlement, bogus documentation, or anything else. Quite the opposite; a supposedly dedicated employee would look fantastic on just about all workplace surveillance metrics, and could be busily robbing the company of millions of dollars. This employee would be in dutiful attendance at all times, have a spotless record, and the algorithm could miss them completely. This employee would probably get promoted.
- Keyloggers: Keyloggers are old hacking software, monitoring keyboard usage. For a while they were the worst of all hacking tools, able to find passwords and monitor possibly sensitive information in real time. As workplace surveillance, they’re an each-way bet. Sure, you can monitor the most mundane of all routine information, or, perhaps, and much less often, find an actual security issue. Depends on who you’re monitoring.
- Performance: One of the more cynical, (and accurate), expert comments on performance reviews from their inception was that they were inefficient at best. How can it possibly take a competent manager 6 months or a year to spot under-performance? Surveillance data may not show any work quality values at all.
- AI workplace surveillance: AI is a problematic beast in many ways. It’s arbitrary by definition. It’s based on algorithms, and it may or may not deliver value. To be fair – AI can be extremely efficient; but if you point it at the wrong targets, it can’t.
- HR ramifications: HR has been accused, rightly and wrongly, of over-promoting endless HR protocols, and wrongly, of being added expense for employers. Both views are way too simple. Some HR protocols are based on law. Some are “debatable” to say the least. The expense comes with the natural environment of managing actual people, and the true value of that cost can be defined by competent management. Workplace surveillance is a mixed blessing for HR purposes; it can document the useless and document real issues but doesn’t, and can’t, actually do much about them.
- Privacy: This is a truly gruesome piece of string of many lengths. Privacy laws, and what a court thinks are private issues can vary depending on the case. The trouble is that workplace surveillance can put employers in a position of invading privacy unintentionally, for no valid employment reason. An employer could be hit for millions for a bit of CCTV footage, in theory. The line between legitimate security and lawsuits is way too vague.
- Surveillance as deterrence: Well, is it? Given that white-collar crime is estimated to cost the US $300 billion per year, maybe not. The US has the highest level of surveillance; it’s the equivalent of the Chinese Social Credit system, and it’s obviously not stopping a lot of actual crime. It’s a burglar alarm, to a point; a deterrent, it obviously isn’t. The only notable deterrent in workplace surveillance is people’s distrust of workplace surveillance.
- Remote surveillance: This is trickier than it could ever seem. What if you find you’re getting personal data from someone’s phone or home computer, intentionally or otherwise? It’ll all be logged somewhere, and easy to subpoena. Another self-induced IED for workplace surveillance.
The huge, ironic, fatal flaw in management culture
It’d be easy enough to write an encyclopedia on the problems with modern management culture. From excruciating, talentless mindless verbosity to obsessive meetings to deranged hierarchies, it’s all there. It’s like How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying, to the letter. Just add sycophants and a healthy dose of incompetence, and you’re all set.
Exactly like that story, workplace surveillance has become a matter of appearances. It has nothing to do with management, management responsibilities, or anything else. Nothing is “managed” by workplace surveillance. It looks good, it’s mainstream… and what, exactly?
…And nothing good, for sure. You don’t stop a financial crime or a workplace shooting by doing a digitized documentary about it. You don’t turn a workplace klutz into Super Employee with it, either. The current exodus of people from workplaces, aka The Great Resignation, hasn’t been stopped by it, either. There may not be anyone to manage, particularly if people are driven to leave by workplace surveillance.
Therefore, with elegant logic, you don’t need so many managers. Irony can make a point, can’t it?
To rather inexcusably drag Yoda into a metaphor:
“Out of your mind, you must be, Luke.”
That pretty much covers it. Workplace surveillance puts management in so many untenable, and pun intended, unworkable positions. The mere fact that there’s so much potential risk upside on something so basic is hardly encouraging. The bottom line – Either you manage, or it manages. Which seems safer?
