Pandemic prompts surge of online employee monitoring. One executive calls it ‘soul crushing’
Employee monitoring software stalks websites workers visit, tracks clicks on a keyboard and captures periodic screenshots throughout the workday.
Although the software has given companies the ability to snoop on their employees for decades, office workers’ shift to working remotely during the ongoing pandemic has increased the number of businesses nationwide actively monitoring them by 54% since 2019.
Teramind, an Aventura-based global leader in employee monitoring, has seen its software sales triple since most U.S. companies abruptly closed offices when the pandemic began in March 2020.
“Many companies who had to shift to this work from home environment ... scoured the internet looking for monitoring on the productivity side of things,” said Eli Sutton, Teramind’s vice president of global operations. “And that’s when the interest on our playing field for productivity monitoring essentially exploded.”
While certain Miami-area technology companies focus on cybersecurity and detecting such threats for employers, Teramind has shifted its attention to monitoring employees’ emails and online meetings — even though work-from-home productivity has remained similar to previous office output or even exceeded expectations.
The heightened monitoring of remote workers has raised a host of concerns for companies and their workforces: employee trust, worker privacy, elevated stress among workers, among other things.
On the other hand, there are people who don’t find employers monitoring their digital work bothersome.
Many workers unaware of monitoring
About 80% of American businesses are using monitoring software, according to an ExpressVPN survey published in May, which gathered data from 2,000 companies and 2,000 employees.
Although Teramind’s monitoring software watches a broad range of workers’ activities, including recording what sites are viewed on computer screens, it doesn’t use web cameras to determine worker productivity.
“I think it really draws on the wrong side of the ethical boundary,” Sutton said of the cameras.
South Florida’s Teramind encourages, but doesn’t require its commercial customers to inform their employees they’re being monitored.
While looking over their shoulder can be intrusive and unnecessary to workers, Sutton has been surprised by emails the software provider has received from workers who aren’t bothered by the surveillance. They noted that having a job while many friends and families were jettisoned from occupations during the pandemic outweighs any objections to being monitored by their employers.
“That kind of caught us off guard but was very interesting to see,” the Teramind executive said.
Potential harm to employee trust, well-being
With daily monitoring, an employee can feel like a 4-year-old who can’t be trusted, said Triparna De Vreede, the University of South Florida director of information systems and management.
“Trust is like glass, once broken it can never be repaired,” she said, noting that workers can begin to view themselves as mechanical equipment.
To that end, one in every six employees didn’t even know it was possible to monitor their online tasks, according to the ExpressVPN survey.
De Vreede said the monitoring can help companies learn when employees are wayward, but found fault in businesses who neglect to tell employees the information they are extracting and the consequences that can arise. Insidious monitoring, she said, threatens employees’ well-being.
“There is a saying I grew up with when I was a child: ‘Trust in God but lock your cars,’” she said. “So, that is employee monitoring. Trust in your employees, but tell them that we will be doing periodic monitoring.”
Michael Harari, a Florida Atlantic University associate professor of human resource management, would prefer to scrap employee monitoring software entirely. Although he said the research suggests monitoring provides more accurate job evaluations than a manager’s subjective judgments, the software doesn’t allow for natural work breaks and impromptu chats with coworkers. Being able to detach from work throughout the workday, he said, is essential for improving psychological health.
Software companies are gaining a financial windfall selling the monitoring service, he said.
But “I think that employers are going to find that it undermines their culture by making employees stressed, breeding distrust and promoting turnover,” Harari said.
Patrick Chinery, the Miami co-founder of Quality Contact Centers, called the software demoralizing and wants nothing to do with it.
“It’s just a soul-crushing thing,” Chinery said. “We haven’t had to utilize that, we haven’t even tried to implement it or brought it up in work conversation — call it old school.”
The Nicaragua-based call center provides translation services for hospitals, banks and insurance companies. A quality assurance specialist monitors employees at random, he said, and Chinery has found human monitoring to be effective.
“The computer doesn’t have a soul,” he said. “The computer doesn’t care.”
Florida law offers limited worker protection
Whether or not employee monitoring treads into potential illegality depends on how invasive it is, said Timothy Shields, a Fort Lauderdale data privacy lawyer.
According to Florida law it’s unacceptable, in most cases, to turn on a web camera in an employee’s home unless that’s explicitly clear to the employee.
Most businesses will specify in an employee handbook that they use monitoring services. An employer is required to notify workers when using web camera footage, audio and GPS tracking in their homes, Shields said.
Worker consent to monitoring is not a yes or no answer in the world of employee surveillance.
“Can someone opt out of any type of tracking from their employer?” Shields said. “The short answer is yes — by not being employed there.”
Pandemic causes micromanagement
Nearly 70% of employers are uneasy about remote work because they can’t observe employees in person, according to the ExpressVPN survey.
De Vreede, the USF information systems and management director, described the pandemic-induced workplace transformation as driving the need for companies to micromanage employees.
“There was a loss of control, so that loss of control translated into following people into their homes, not literally, but through these monitoring devices,” she said.
Management should have conversations about the extent of employee monitoring along with the ethics of the practice, De Vreede said.
“There are no conversations, no explainability of what’s going on and that’s creating the whole uncertainty and this darkness around it, which need not be there,” she said. “Because yes, monitoring is required. We monitor our own homes, don’t we?”
This story was originally published December 19, 2021 at 1:00 AM.