Work at home? Your employer may be watching
Posted by: Sheryle Moon in teleworking, tags: skills shortages, teleworkingIt’s a sign of the times that, as teleworking becomes more popular, companies are stepping up their electronic monitoring of tens of thousands of home-based independent contractors.
The Wall Street Journal reports that employers are taking photos of workers’ computer screens at random, counting keystrokes and mouse clicks and snapping photos of them at their computers. “They’re plying sophisticated technology to instantaneously detect anger, raised voices or children crying in the background on workers’ home-office calls. Others are using Darwinian routing systems that keep calls coming so fast workers have no time to go to the bathroom.”
Peter Weddle, an author, consultant and researcher on employment Web sites, calls the trend “21st Century Big Brotherism” that risks being “horribly intrusive.” Skilled workers “don’t need someone looking over their shoulders,” he says. But while the monitoring can put a damper on home life, many people are so eager to avoid commuting hassles that they see the practice as an acceptable tradeoff.
The article makes an interesting point. While this sort of monitoring has so far been mainly restricted to freelance IT workers, writers, graphic-design artists and call-center agents, the monitoring itself may speed teleworking growth, because it tears down one of the biggest obstacles to working at home - employers’ fear that remote workers will slack off.
As fuel costs soar and we come to grips with the greenhouse challenge, and as skills shortages continue to bite, we must find creative ways to keep talented people in the workforce - and teleworking is one of them. And as teleworking becomes a mainstream choice, we’ll find that people shrug off domestic sounds of barking dogs, children and lawnmowers, just the way we now accept that some people hold teleconferences in taxis and write briefs on airplanes and take client meetings in cafes.
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