What Everybody Knows About You: Your Employer
What Everybody Knows About You: Your Employer
This is the final article in a series about data collection today. We end with tracking by corporate managers.
I imagine that most readers of this series, like me, are “knowledge workers” considered part of the “creative class,” and therefore can’t be tracked like widgets on an assembly line. But a vast number of workers are subject to very intrusive surveillance.
Extensive tracking is a legal part of the employee’s contract with the employer and can include:
- Keystroke logging
- Screen monitoring
- Internet use
- Email content
- Software application use
- Call duration and content
- Voicemail and instant messages
- Location tracking (through GPS)
- Badge swipe data
- Video surveillance
- Biometric data, such as fingerprints or facial recognition scans
Naturally, these aren’t all used for everybody. If you’re entering data from paper forms into a database, keystroke logging might be used to track your speed and check whether you’re taking long breaks. Conversely, a truck driver (including postal workers) would likely have a GPS so that the employer knows how far along you are on your route and whether you’re using the company vehicle for side trips.
One company that tracks mouse and keyboard activity entices its clients as follows: “Answer key workforce questions: Who is disengaged? Who is off-track? Who is at risk of burnout? How does remote or hybrid work impact productivity?” (The last question is a general question involving aggregate data.)
And the top-rated company in one survey tracks a huge range of user activities: “These can range from screen recordings, live views of employee PCs, tracking emails, and keystrokes all the way to Zoom sessions.”
One important segment of personal information is walled off from corporate managers in the United States: health information. HIPAA allows you to take advantage of an employer’s health plan without them seeing your diagnoses or treatments.
<< Read the previous part of this series | Read the series from the beginning >>
