Employee Snooping Bad For Business, But On The Rise

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from the if-you-want-your-workforce-to-be-paranoid... dept

A new report will surprise no one by claiming that new technology is allowing more employers to snoop on their employees. Of course, the report also points out that all this snooping is generally bad for business. It's bad for workers' health and lowers their productivity. They don't really explain the "health" part - though, I imagine it has something to do with stress. All this to find a few bad employees? Wouldn't they be better off improving their hiring practices and learning to trust their employees? It's funny how these things cycle around. I had thought that Taylorism had been discredited and companies were all about empowerment. It seems that only goes until technology allows us to bring back constant monitoring.

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Mar 12th, 2004 @ 7:14am
Missing Metrics
by McGroarty
What gets me is how few employers measure employee productivity instead of ass-in-seat time.

You have two guys: One guy browses the web and chats with family an hour each day, yet gets plenty of work done. Another fellow stays late, never screws around, but still gets less done. Which would you keep? Which would ass-in-seat and employee monitoring suggest you keep?

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