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New Survey Shows the Extent of Remote Worker Surveillance

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Privacy and security company ExpressVPN’s study on remote worker surveillance reveals some troubling statistics. The VPN provider’s research was focused on the remote workforce. It aimed to discover how much remote surveillance is happening, and how it is impacting employees and their relationships with their enterprises.

Remote work as the new normal

Across the world, companies are extending their flexible, remote, and hybrid work policies indefinitely. The pandemic precipitated a dramatic change from the traditional, in-office 40-hour workweek.

As Covid-19 restrictions are easing and national populations are hitting higher vaccination rates, workers can return to offices, but employees are reluctant to do so, and companies, in a bid to mitigate attrition, are committing to retain remote and hybrid work models.

However, according to ExpressVPN’s research, the privacy costs are higher than expected.

Trading privacy for freedom: ExpressVPN’s key findings

  • One in three employees does not believe that their companies are using remote surveillance.
  • 15 percent of employees didn’t know that remote surveillance was possible.
  • 83 percent of the employers surveyed are aware of the ethical concerns over remote worker surveillance, but 78 percent said they used software to monitor their employees.
  • 56 percent of the employees surveyed said that they felt stressed and anxious about being surveilled while working, with 32 percent saying that they took fewer breaks because of monitoring.
  • One in four employees would take a 25 percent pay cut to avoid remote monitoring entirely.
  • 46 percent of the employers who participated in the study said that they used stored messages, videos, and calls to watch out for the formation of unions.
  • 73 percent of employers also said they used stored communications as a way to inform performance reviews.

At the crux of the issue of remote monitoring is employees’ need to be trusted to get the job done, and employers’ need to have visibility into the process, accountability over any hours billed, and the knowledge that business objectives are being met. For some employers, remote monitoring seems like the perfect solution to a diversified workforce.

Employees, however, are not happy about the rise of surveillance. In many ways, the level of monitoring while working remotely is greater than when working in an office. That is, the level of micromanagement, or at least perceived micromanagement, has intensified.

Many employees noted the negative psychological effects of being surveilled, including feeling unappreciated, stressed out, untrusted, and resentful of their employers. Forty-one percent of the employee participants said their stress and anxiety were due to “constantly wondering whether they were being watched.”

Despite the fact that remote worker monitoring clearly erodes trust, which is the basis for any healthy relationship, be it personal or professional, monitoring software seems to be here to stay. Several of the employers who participated in ExpressVPN’s study were clearly in support of surveillance, with one noting that employees “need to be monitored to make sure that they don’t do things that are against their own best interest or the best interest of the company.”

 

 

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