If you work remotely, your bosses are probably using software to track you. Here's how they'll catch you slacking off.
If you work remotely, your bosses are probably using software to track you. Here's how they'll catch you slacking off.
Bosses use employee-tracking software to catch remote workers slacking off on the job. We asked one tracking company what their technology does.
If you care about privacy; you tell your employer clearly that you do not tolerate "Boss-ware" or other spyware on your personal devices.
If they give a shit; they will then be forced to issue one that the company owns and manages. If they don't give a shit; you walk away. Lots of companies will hire you without that crap. Don't believe people who gaslight you by saying "But every company uses it!" or anything sounding remotely like it.
On a company-issued machine; you tell your employer clearly that you do not tolerate "Boss-ware" that will be used to track or manage your time. Walk away; if they refuse to keep your machine clean of it or attempt to raise any concern that you're not at your PC every damned moment of your core hours. You have a right to live your life. As long as your immediate bosses and supervisors are happy with the quality and quantity of the work you submit, you've done your job. If they are unhappy with the quality or quantity of your work then, they can respectfully schedule a meeting with you to discuss it. The way an actual adult should be treated, and, would be treated in an actual office that observes all standard rules of professionalism. With respect.
TL;DR: Do not accept the implementation of Boss-ware as if the decision was made with any professionalism or respect for you. If they implement it; you leave as fast as possible. Take any friends that you can with you too, if you can.
I'm probably about to get down voted. But as an IT guy, I install tracking software on a very small subset of systems of employees that are pretty much about to be fired for being useless. The reason we do that is basically to catch employees being dishonest. It's quite possible that the nature of the work makes their productivity hard to gauge. Once we install the software we have some data we can use to push back against outright lies. If we see them spending 75% of their day planning their next vacation instead of getting their work done, they are gone. We don't install the software unless you are already failing to do your job.
Can someone with knowledge please provide links, lists, specifics, because all the articles I find list like, 3 names: "Teramind, Time Doctor, StaffCop, and others." I want to know what "others" are, how many there are, etc etc. I am actually getting quite frustrated with these articles because they talk very generally about some nebulous hypothetical dystopian employee monitoring software, without actually just fucking telling me what the fuck to look for.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
In Australia, a woman said she was fired from her consultant role after her employer's monitoring software found "very low keystroke activity" on her laptop between October and December.
Time Doctor has seen business pick up over the past few years as remote work has taken off, Borja said, and the return-to-office movement hasn't eliminated the demand for employee-tracking software.
A March Resume Builder survey of 1,000 US business leaders with a primarily remote or hybrid workforce found that 96% of them use some form of employee-monitoring software, sometimes called bossware, to monitor worker productivity.
At Tesla's New York plant, workers told Bloomberg that the company tracks how active they are on their computers — and that they've avoided taking bathroom breaks as a result.
Refusing to turn on your webcam during a meeting, for instance, could give your employer the right to fire you if you live in the US, legal experts previously told Insider.
"Everybody in the industry talks about it — you've got the all-seeing eye of Big Brother watching everything the employees are doing, and it's a little creepy," a Time Doctor staffer told Insider in 2021.
The original article contains 678 words, the summary contains 191 words. Saved 72%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
If you're on their device, assume it's a giant surveillance device. If you're forced to do company work on your device, stick it in a VM.
I never turn my work laptop on at home. I don't even have any bookmarks saved in the browser. I have a .txt file synced using Syncthing that I treat as a perpetual notepad where I keep my links. I don't think I've even turned my work laptop on at home or charged it at home this year.
Of course, these are things I can get away with since I'm a professor. But still, I have received emails asking if I need training on how to use my computer because I have barely used it. They really, really wanted me to use Outlook instead of the webapp for some reason. I never did. But, they were so insistent. Recently we lost the ability to change wallpaper, default browsers and quick launch icons.
Work computers: almost a neat perk.
This is very much so a thing that companies do. My company uses one such service. It's just a quick install on the computer and you can't tell that it's even installed unless you know where to look (under Windows Services). It decides how "productive" you are based on what programs you're using, how long you're using them, and what sites you're visiting in the browser. It also takes regular screenshots all day. Records every site you visit. And more.
Personally I hate these kind of monitoring things, but since management wanted it rolled out in 2020 I didn't have a choice but to deploy it.