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Employee Surveillance
Podcast

Employee Surveillance

Who's doing it and why?

Kathleen Davis and Albert Fox Cahn
Fast Company, 2023
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Editorial Rating

9

Qualities

  • Controversial
  • Eye Opening
  • Concrete Examples

Recommendation

Companies’ use of surveillance technology accompanied the shift to remote work. More than half of employers now monitor such performance indicators as computer keystrokes or facial expressions. You may not know if, how, or when your boss is watching you. State laws vary, and if firms disclose that they surveil, that disclosure could be just a footnote in an employee manual. In this sober edition of the Fast Company podcast “The New Way We Work,” deputy editor Kathleen Davis interviews surveillance expert Albert Fox Cahn about the rapid implementation of surveillance tools, now outstripping regulatory privacy measures. This could suggest not one big Big Brother but myriad little Big Brothers in the private sector. All employees, would-be employees, and those managing a far-flung workforce need to understand these issues.

Summary

With remote work, more companies are using “bossware,” surveillance technology that monitors employees’ work.

The spread of electronic monitoring of employees correlates with the move to remote work. Surveys find that more than half of employers use such tools. Major tech firms and startups alike sell products that enable managers to spy on their employees, including those working away from the office. The sales message that promotes these programs relies on the premise that employers can’t trust workers they can’t see.

No evidence justifies this apprehension. Managers simply took it for granted that they needed to be invasive to ensure the quality of remote work. Instead of improving the work environment, however, such software undermines motivation. Spying technology can poison employer-employee relationships. And when managers are asked if their...

About the Podcast

Kathleen Davis, a supervising podcast editor at Fast Company, interviewed Albert Fox Cahn, founder and executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP) and a fellow at Yale Law School and the Harvard Kennedy School.

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