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What HR Departments Need to Know About Employee Surveillance

There’s been a dramatic shift to remote work since the start of the COVID-19. Because of this, managers globally are wondering: how can productivity be measured and maintained outside of the office? As evidenced by the explosive growth in software like email analytics and Hubspot, remote monitoring tools were undoubtedly a popular answer to this question for many companies.

However, while the usefulness of employee surveillance tools may prompt some managers to continue using them once employees go back into the office, organizations should proceed with caution. Ill-considered or poorly thought out monitoring procedures can cause significant issues for any company. Monitoring tools can help make a workplace more efficient and improve the visibility of human resources. But staff are naturally likely to be wary of any procedure that increases surveillance without their consent. To mitigate any negative consequences of employee monitoring, it’s important to be aware of potential issues.

The regulatory risk of employee surveillance is growing

Though the act of monitoring employees, whether on their devices or in the workplace, is generally legal. However, poor storage or misuse of data collected can expose employers to significant fines.

While GDPR presents a clear example of what responsibilities employers in the EU have regarding employee data, regulatory frameworks are evolving elsewhere, as well. For any organization with employees based in California, employee data will have the equivalent protections to consumer information from the 1st of January 2023. Thus, as a requirement, employers must protect any collected data from breaches. They also must allow employees to request the deletion of any information collected about them.

Elsewhere in the U.S., similar legislation is proliferating. Despite the fact that some laws, such as Virginia’s recently passed Consumer Data Protection Act, currently exclude employee data, legislators could eventually expand regulations to include employees. Internationally too, other GDPR-esque legislation, such as Brazil’s LGPD, explicitly includes employee information in their coverage.

Done wrong, employee surveillance can damage organizational culture

Another “hidden cost” of keeping track of employees is the potential danger that monitoring poses to workplace culture.

In one example, efforts by the British bank Barclays to introduce remote monitoring of employees were met with immediate employee backlash. Similarly, Microsoft was forced to backtrack on their attempt to integrate a “productivity score” feature into their Office 365 suite after inciting a barrage of negative media attention.

Ultimately, employees do not like being monitored, particularly when it happens without their consent. As a result, expanding employee monitoring can necessitate an inherent trade-off in trust. Paradoxically, when monitoring is used haphazardly, research from the University of Chicago shows that it can cause real productivity to decline.

Making employee surveillance work

Despite the hazards that doing so invokes, monitoring employees can still have numerous benefits for organizations and even employees themselves if used correctly. Fit for purpose, monitoring can improve cybersecurity, highlight employee strengths, and even reduce harassment within workplaces.

During the pandemic, employee monitoring also became a lifeline for newly remote managers. However, as workforces move back on-site or adapt to more permanent hybrid/remote working arrangements, every organization needs to uncover precisely how much monitoring is necessary.

Because monitoring will inherently impact employee privacy and place burdens on their employers, where possible, organizations should reduce its use and ensure that any temporary measures in place have an explicit sunset clause. Another vital step towards making monitoring fair and fit for purpose is to listen to employees themselves. Any organization that is monitoring employees should prioritize asking their staff about their privacy concerns.

Ultimately, however, any efforts to monitor employees, whether on-site or remotely, need to coincide with carefully crafted policies. Here are three things that any organization that is considering continuing or expanding its employee monitoring program needs to know.

The legal environment surrounding employee data collection is getting more complex

No jurisdiction currently prohibits employee monitoring outright or plans on doing so. Regardless, the legal environment surrounding employee data collection requires an increasingly nuanced approach.

While organizations working under frameworks like the GDPR or CPRA face a legal minefield when it comes to rolling out employee surveillance programs, data privacy legislation exists beyond just these kinds of comprehensive jurisdictions. Notably, across the U.S., specific purpose privacy legislation is increasingly likely to impact how employers can monitor staff.

For example, the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) restricts how companies operating in Illinois can use biometric data such as fingerprints or facial recognition. Impacted companies must give advance notice, receive employee consent, and have a retention and destruction schedule for biometric data collected. Critically, this law also gives employees a private right of action against employers should a violation occur. Similar laws are also in place in Texas and New York.

Other states, such as Connecticut, require organizations to give employees notice of any monitoring. Organizations need to carefully examine whether other laws specifically impact the types of data they plan on collecting.

Transparency and privacy are vital

While many employee monitoring tools are new and questions around data use and storage continue to evolve, the ethical issues they raise have been around for decades. Ultimately, research shows that the process of employee monitoring requires buy-in from the employees themselves. The vital factors in this respect are transparency and consent.

Employee agreement for intrusive monitoring is critical to increasing its acceptance, even when not required by law. The key to getting consent is letting employees know that monitoring their activity is ultimately for their benefit too. Backing up this thesis, a Gartner study found that while few employees were okay with employers observing their email without a just cause, over 50 percent don’t mind being monitored if their employer tells them why they are doing so.

Matching monitoring with workplace privacy is critical

As they surveil employees, many organizations take responsibility for incredibly valuable employee personal information. With both data breaches and incidents of identity theft soaring, this situation is naturally going to raise employee privacy concerns.

To mitigate employee worries, employers can integrate privacy into their workplace by rolling out pro-privacy workplace benefits to staff. On one level, this can mean engaging employees with privacy awareness training that extends beyond what’s necessary to maintain cybersecurity. However, employers can also equip their workforces with privacy tools like password managers and data broker removal services that minimize employees’ chances of falling victim to fraud outside the workplace.

Final thoughts

As companies struggled to adapt to virtual work, employee monitoring soared. However, as things return to “business as usual,” it’s worth revisiting workplace monitoring procedures to make sure they’re necessary.

Deploying digital monitoring tools within the workplace has never been easier. But rolling out or expanding an employee monitoring program is not a process that any employer should take lightly.

Ultimately, employers that monitor employee activity need to consider how monitoring fits into the legal environment they operate in. They also need to consider whether their actions are transparent and proactively mitigate employee concerns. Only then will employee acceptance of monitoring increase.

Trending in 2020: The (Somewhat) New Workplace

What does your workplace look like in 2020?

The workplace starting off this new decade is a whole different animal than the workplace was in 2010. The entire definition of the workplace and the nature of work has changed.  So have the expectations of employees.

Here’s what you and your team need to know about what 2020 means for your office: 

The Death of the Office… Kind Of

It’s official: the office is dead. The office your parents knew, that is.

2020 will build on a trend that’s been on the rise in 2018 and 2019. More employees rely on technology to do their jobs and keep up with their teams. This means that more employees know they can do their jobs from anywhere–and they’re not afraid to ask the boss for that benefit.

According to the Society for Human Resources Management, 69% of organizations allow their employees to work from home at least some of the time, and 27% of organizations allowed full-time remote work arrangements.

Technology is not the only driver behind this shift. Millennials, who have more debt than any generation in history, are increasingly leaving prohibitively expensive cities in favor of the suburbs where they can get more space for less (and the ability to work remotely is a major commuting benefit).

Plus, the highest-paying, most advanced jobs are concentrated in a small handful of expensive cities where the cost of living can chase out much of the talent pool. Remote work allows companies to stay competitive by broadening their talent base and attracting talent that would otherwise be inaccessible.

Somebody’s Watching You

Technology is behind the workplace monitoring trend. But this isn’t 1984, and Big Brother isn’t the one watching you — that would be your boss.

A survey by Gartner found that 22% of organizations worldwide are using employee movement data, 17% are monitoring workplace computer usage data, and 16% are using Microsoft Outlook or calendar-related data. An additional Gartner survey of 239 organizations found that 50% are now using non-traditional monitoring methods, such as analyzing employee emails and social media posts, gathering biometric data, examining who’s meeting with whom, and scrutinizing how employees use the workplace.

Based on this survey, Gartner predicts that 80% of companies will be using non-traditional methods in 2020.

That data is being used to make decisions about running the workplace. More than a quarter of employers have fired employees for misusing email, and nearly a third of employers have fired employees for misusing the Internet at work. On the other hand, workplace surveillance can benefit customers — take, for instance, hospital sensors that detect nurse hand-washing practices.

Employee Activism

But workplace surveillance isn’t holding employees back from pursuing what matters to them, even if it means speaking up against their own employer.

Half of all millennial employees have spoken out about employer actions about a controversial societal issue. The same Bloomberg study found that younger employees are more likely to be activists, though millennials are the biggest activist generation.

The past year has seen countless examples of employee activism, instigated by a sensational (and divisive) political climate. Hundreds of Wayfair employees walked out after learning that the company sold furniture to a Texas detention center for migrant children.

A Workplace That Stands for Something

This feeds into the millennial need to work for a purpose, not just money or a career.

A CNBC survey found that 69% of employees want to work for a company with clearly-stated values, and 35% stated that the most critical factor in their workplace happiness was the feeling that their work is meaningful. And these days, employees are willing to trade money for a purpose, with 9 in 10 employees stating that they would take a pay cut if it meant they could do meaningful work.

In fact, when employees were asked to rank what matters most to them in their work, money was a distant second to workplace purpose.

The Changing Definition of Benefits

That said, employees (especially millennials) won’t turn their nose up at decent benefits.

Millennials are the job-hopping generation, with half of all millennials (compared to 60% of all non-millennials), stating that they plan to be working at a different company than their current one by next year. In short, millennials don’t see a long-term future with their companies, and the jobs they take don’t tend to last more than a few years.

But for the few years that you do have your employees, they want that time to be worth their while. Younger workers are pushing back against the idea of work as a constant obsession. More of them demand increasing flexibility and benefits that reflect it, such as more paid leave after having a baby, the ability to work remotely, or allowances for breaks during the day.

The End of the Corporate Ladder

In addition, younger workers no longer think of the corporate ladder the same way their parents do. If anything, the corporate ladder doesn’t exist.

After all, why take the corporate ladder when you could take the elevator?

Younger workers are highly motivated and eager to make an impact, and they don’t want to wait for their turn. They want to move at their own pace. This means that more young workers are starting their own companies or working on their own projects rather than viewing the corporate ladder as an aspiration.

They also don’t see the value in trying to scale the wrong wall. Millennials are willing to be workaholics, but they’ve learned their lesson from the Baby Boomers–they won’t be workaholics unless success is guaranteed.

Also, young workers who grew up in the Great Recession aren’t afraid to scrap and start over, as they’re all too aware that a stable income and a good job are more fragile than they seem. Instead of putting all their eggs in one basket, they’re willing to keep trying until they find the right fit, and they’re more willing to work parallel jobs at the same time.

Take Charge of Workplace Trends for 2020

The workplace trends of 2020 will change the way your office operates —and that can be to your office’s benefit if you’re prepared to take advantage of it. Keep these trends in mind to ensure that your workplace can attract (and keep) the best talent on the market.

Photo by Proxyclick from Unsplash.