More employers use tech to track workers

[Blue_Tires]

Almost every worker has done it: gotten in a little Facebook updating, personal e-mailing, YouTube watching and friend calling while on the clock.

Such indiscretions often went undetected by company management everywhere but the most secure and highly proprietary companies or governmental agencies. Not anymore.

METHODS: Employers use myriad ways to monitor workers
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Firms have become sharp-eyed, keenly eared watchdogs as they try to squeeze every penny's worth of their employees' salaries and to ensure they have the most professional and lawsuit-proof workplaces.

Managers use technological advances to capture workers' computer keystrokes, monitor the websites they frequent, even track their whereabouts through GPS-enabled cellphones. Some companies have gone as far as using webcams and minuscule video cameras to secretly record employees' movements.

"There are two trends driving the increase in monitoring," says Lewis Maltby, author of the workplace rights book Can They Do That? "One is financial pressure. Everyone is trying to get leaner and meaner, and monitoring is one way to do it. The other reason is that it's easier than ever. It used to be difficult and expensive to monitor employees, and now, it's easy and cheap."

Employers no longer have to hire a pricey private investigator to install a complicated video system or computer-use tracking devices. Now, they can easily buy machine-monitoring software and tiny worker-tracking cameras at a local electronics store or through Internet retailers.

Monitoring has expanded beyond expected, highly regulated industries such as pharmaceuticals and financial services. Employees at radio stations, ad agencies, media outlets, sports leagues, even thinly staffed mom-and-pop workplaces are tracked.

Smarsh, one of many firms that offers technology to monitor, archive and search employee communications on e-mail, IM, Twitter and text-messaging, services about 10,000 U.S. workplaces.

"Employees should assume that they are going to be watched," says CEO Stephen Marsh.

Keeping an eye out

Two-thirds of employers monitor workers' Internet use, according to an American Management Association/ePolicy Institute survey from 2007, the latest data available from those groups. Nearly half of employers said they track content, keystrokes and time spent at the keyboard.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/workplace/2010-03-17-workplaceprivacy15_CV_N.htm

[Stargazer99]

1. I think it is time to start snooping into employers personal lives

Some employers you might not want to work for if you found out their history.

[Blue_Tires]

3. +1000

[Posteritatis]

8. Yep. (nt)

[Newest Reality]

2. Not surprising ... actually expected

Orwell be praised! This is the trajectory we, and our technology are on. First, we watched for decades, and now it starts to watch us back. We might call this the dawn of involuntary connectivity. Cell phones are voluntary trackers that can pretty much pinpoint your location, and there is so much more.

I'm just wondering how long it will take, (a generation or two) before it seems commonplace to live in an ubiquitous panopticon where every action of every moment of every day is observed, recorded and then subjected to computer algorithms that decide whether or not to flag your behavior for human processing.

One wonders if the close, fine monitoring will just apply to those within the system, or if the underclass and rejected will also fall under scrutiny? I imagine it will be totalitarian eventually. It almost looks like this type of monitoring emerges with the increasing levels of refinement and sophistication in technology.

It seems that people are embracing it and allowing it with little or no resistance, (like carrying a cellphone, for instance) so nothing will stop this Brave New World we are entering.

[old mark]

4. No surprise here-I worked as a PA state civil service employee, and was in meetings

proposing banning of all cellphones, monitoring/recording of all phone calls, and implementing of installation of video/audio cams in stairways and hallways. We already had keystroke tracking on all computers, limited access to anything outside state websites. They also closed off heat and A/C ducts to employee break/lunch rooms so workers would not stay there too long (1/2 hour lunch break)and made it impossible to open windows in those rooms.

We were mandated to bring in originals of marriage licenses so that HR could check for people not legally married and rescind any unauthorized health insurance or benefits. We also had mandatory participation in a "preventative" health program, in which people from the insurance company would call you at home to make suggestions on how to improve your health, mostly idiotic stuff that you had been doing since childhood. Participation was recorded and you would get letters criticizing your responses.

Just wait - it will get worse.

mark

[onethatcares]

5. this may be semi off topic but I noticed an ad

from one of those furniture stores that had bedroom sets with a media console and a 32 inch flat screen tv included in the package.

I got to thinking, aside from watching some porn, why would anyone need a tv with the complete set up in their bedroom?

Maybe my tinfoil is getting a bit tight, but with having to buy cable access, how long will it be before the turn around begins and they start watching us?

[lib2DaBone]

6. The flogging will continue until the morale improves....

..gotta get that worker "productivity" up a little more. Doing 3 jobs at once is no longer enough.

[onethatcares]

7. as the shrub once said

"it's a totally unique American experience, working three jobs at slave wages"