I found this article on Sunday Times. Apparently some large companies are monitoring their employees 24/7 with some wearable card or headband. Even outside of work. This is getting insane. Ministry of Love will make sure we are all happy and productive.
I was goona post a link to the online article but it's a paywall.
Interesting, thanks for sharing
Wow that is some messed up stuff. If that was ever to be a requirement in somewhere i work I would leave immediately.
Sure they say they give you all the data in a report and it only records the tone and not the content of you voice, that is open to some serious potential abuse. They say that employers only get aggregate information but then later they say you can single out and shame individuals for not walking enough.
Another place is using a device to prod people reminding them to sit up straight. While yet another is using it to train employees to clone movements and mannerism of others to boost sales and rapport with customers.
This is messed up in a big way. I do not want to live in that future/this present.
Unfortunately, not everyone is free to make that choice.
I'm pretty sure that even with this information some harm can be done (I'm looking at you NSA and GCHQ).
A few years ago, this was some dystopian science-fiction like 1984.
I'm glad that we aren't quite at eternal life levels of tech yet, I don't wanna hang around for the future if this is where it's headed. Its starting to remind me of the movie Equilibrium.
On a positive note, my boss got me to install security cameras all around the workshop pointing directly at work stations so he could watch people from his office. He got a really cheap system though, the cables are terrible & lose signal constantly. He won't spend money on news ones, so has an alarm go off about every 30-60 seconds as they drop in & out. Its driving him even more mental then he already was :)
One of the major news broadcasters briefly covered this late last year just as they were starting to roll it out - might have been the BBC?
It's disgraceful but I'm not sure who to hate more, the companies using the technology or the scum that created it. Plenty of people looking for ways to monetise someone else's employees or customers, and no interest in ethical concerns.
We will be all murdered in our sleep because of something we said in work or some 20 years old facebook post that is not PC?
Attatch it to your cat, wait to see the confused response from the ones monitoring.
Holy shit this is ridiculous! One should be free to do whatever he or she like off the work, boss has no right to monitor that!
You're fired!
Yeah. Fuck, that.
I'm so grateful I have my own company!
Would never implement anything like that to staff when it grows down the line either. To be honest, wouldn't be surprised if the last company I worked at started using these - they even timed employee cigarette breaks!
I am not really either, but I am pretty sure I would not want to be alive if there no option not to had it.
LOL my sides. If you attach it to your cat, they'll think you're pissed off all the time.
Attach it to your dog and they'll think you're happy all the time.
So as an employer I see no benefits to this.
Looks like an HR department head goy sold snake oil.
I have employees that are are grumpy all the time. They get work done and don't get into fights.
Your demeanor doesn't matter only your work output.
The idiots saying they will use it to see if people are responsive to meetings. Meetings are generally dry and many times unnecessary. The only people who would care are those who love meetings for the sake of meetings.
People who want crap like this are the worthless people I would fire.
Comedy piece on security cards and phone headsets?????
No wonder we call French Fries, Freedom Fries. It may be time to dust off my French language books.
You have to opt-out, but then your employer can no longer call, text or email after hours or on weekends.
It only applies to companies with more than 50 employees though.
How much do you want to bet we see a lot of companies split into smaller units up to avoid this new law.
There is a problem with that law though. Sometimes you just HAVE to contact your employees over the weekend to discuss unexpected changes in schedules.
For example : Imagine that you have a company with 50+ employees who are cleaning people's homes on a weekly or fortnightly basis. If a customer who is scheduled for Monday morning sends an email on Saturday to inform you of a death in the family or an unexpected business trip, you need to be able to tell your employee that he/she doesn't need to go there and discuss if the employee wants to clean elsewhere instead or would rather take half a day off.
You just can't have that discussion on Monday morning because your employee may already be on his way to that customer.
Good point.
But most laws have problems initially. A democratic nation has to pass laws like this to curb the email abuse that is happening now and I am sure both sides will work out needed refinements in the future.
We can only hope...
The company should suck it up. As a % of labor cost it's miniscule.
