Working From Home… Employer Monitoring Of Staff

RavsFan

RavsFan

Well-known member
I saw a report on Good Morning Britain that some employers are becoming concerned that some employees working from home may be….. slacking. I dare say a few will be, but I keep reading that in many cases it is beneficial and helps with an employees work life balance and in many cases productivity has either stayed the same or improved.

I was shocked that they can use spyware to take screenshots of your computer and even access web sites visited and snapshots of things you’ve typed and are doing so in some cases without telling you they are doing this. I would have thought they would be required to notify employees of such practices. Most people wont have anything to hide and some may spread their workload over longer hours on and off through the day. It all seems a bit big brother-ish, but I guess in some cases it is justified. I just think employers should at least make staff aware it may happen.
 
RavsFan said:
I saw a report on Good Morning Britain that some employers are becoming concerned that some employees working from home may be….. slacking. I dare say a few will be, but I keep reading that in many cases it is beneficial and helps with an employees work life balance and in many cases productivity has either stayed the same or improved.

I was shocked that they can use spyware to take screenshots of your computer and even access web sites visited and snapshots of things you’ve typed and are doing so in some cases without telling you they are doing this. I would have thought they would be required to notify employees of such practices. Most people wont have anything to hide and some may spread their workload over longer hours on and off through the day. It all seems a bit big brother-ish, but I guess in some cases it is justified. I just think employers should at least make staff aware it may happen.
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Mine certainly monitor everything visited - though don’t actually have a camera on me
I have nothing to hide - I have an allowance of less than 6 minutes to be away from the computer (on top of official breaks) through my shift - and just carry on as if I’m being watched anyway
This narrative of homeworkers being slackers is a lie
 
TeessideCleveland said:
This narrative of homeworkers being slackers is a lie
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In the office, we did have and still do have slackers and people who take the pish. Home working probably exacerbates the issue but it’s mainly on the character / individual.

We also have people who were pretty hard workers, and they’re still the same. They haven’t turned into slackers because they think they can get away with it at home.

It’s all about your ethos and attitude to work. Players are gonna play, no matter what the environment or location. It does need a good manager / management to weed out the slackers, unfortunately in my company, a number of the managers are clueless and useless / don’t give AF.
 
I don't know why people think that working from home means people can slack as if working in an office prevents it. I can be just as unproductive at work as I can at home and at work I can distract more people so they are also unproductive. I'm the sort of person that does all my work in quick bursts and then has downtime in between. I still get everything done and I can be more productive than someone that is staring at their screen so they don't get told off all day.

There are so many studies that have been done that shows people are more productive when they are happy and less productive when they are stressed so any sort of constant monitoring seems like just enforcing people to comply which is going to mean they spend longer working out how to not get told off than they do being productive. There are some jobs that do require permanent concentration like production lines where being present is enough to keep the line moving but any job that requires any sort of thinking or people using their initiative will not get optimum productivity by micro-monitoring people.
 
The UK has suffered from bad management for many years.

That’s why productivity is poor because a lot of managers haven’t a clue what a good worker looks like so resort to nonsense like spying on home workers or insisting on presenteeism in the office.

And don’t get me started on the recent prominency of HR.
 
TeessideCleveland said:
Mine certainly monitor everything visited - though don’t actually have a camera on me
I have nothing to hide - I have an allowance of less than 6 minutes to be away from the computer (on top of official breaks) through my shift - and just carry on as if I’m being watched anyway
This narrative of homeworkers being slackers is a lie
Click to expand...
At least your employer is upfront which is a good thing, it seems some are more sneaky mind. My understanding has always been fairly positive and always thought people probably give more without the distractions within the office environment. I think most people value trust from an employer and repay that with goodwill and productivity, hence my surprise at the discussion.
 
I work for an organisation that is within the "secured" security sector. When we first joined we signed up the official secrets act, and our employment contract states that our computer activity will be logged. All companies will be logging internet activity and will have email filtering in place. If they don't then they are asking for cyber-trouble. Our computers not only have key logging enabled, but also mouse movement tracked to. Comes with the territory. The one thing they cannot do is covertly turn on your webcam.
 
I worked from home for the last 10 years until a recent career change. They have been able to monitor all this stuff for years.

The beauty of working from home is you can nip and do stuff during the working week - this is possible because you tend to start earlier and work longer. In my experience I have found that home workers are more productive than those in the office.

Office workers - 10 cops of tea a day, chatting at desks, 15 min poo breaks, smoking breaks etc etc - I’m surprised anything gets done!!!
 
I have worked remotely since 2006 (with a 4 year gap when I left to work with my dad). I can hand on heart say that productivity now is miles and miles ahead of when I started, as tech has come so far. In my experience the vast majority of people have the right attitude and management needs to assume the principle of best intentions, rather than assuming the worst of folks.as a starting point. It says as much about the manager as it does the employee if the trust isn't there.

Getting management to work on measuring people on outputs rather than presence this is half the battle. In the companies I have worked in, there are always cohorts of people who benefit from being in the office together (entry level sales for example) where learning by osmosis is so important. The younger staff are often less likely to have a home environment that is conducive to home working, which is really important. Also I would add the social element of working together when you are first into work is important. We had hybrid at my last place and we found the younger staff overwhelmingly chose to spend at least 4 days per week in the office, even though they were free not to.
 
I work in IT in a school and all our teachers are provided with a laptop which we can monitor, remote view etc anytime as long as they are connected to the internet. The devices are all set with with our firewall etc so even if they are using their own wifi, certain websites will still be blocked.
 
I guess one of the knock on downsides will be to the shops, cafes and other outlets nearby work premises and therefore the economy as a whole.
 
My experience as a customer is that its slightly harder to communicate with customer services in the last 10 years. Nowadays it seems more patchy. With more people working from home I would expect it to be better, because time is not lost commuting etc.

Of course I don't know if the number of workers have increased or decreased in customer services in the organisations I use.

What does puzzle me if it is more productive for employees to work from home why has UK productivity not increased?
 
Surely it's not an issue. It's the electronic equivalent of the gaffer wandering by to check on you?
 
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