Lect 6 - Workplace Surveillance Flashcards
What are some ways or instruments used to monitor employees?
CCTV, Records, Quotas, Life Style (monitoring facebook), and attitude
How does Kirstie Ball describe Workplace Surveillance?
Management’s ability to monitor, record, and track employee performance, behaviours, and personal characteristics in real time as a part of broader organizational processes
What is scientific management?
The creation of assembly lines, which is a particular group of people who are trained to specialize in specific fields of construction.
This was a shift from having a small amount of people construction one big thing to breaking up the parts of construction and having groups of people complete each part and assemble together
What resulted from scientific management?
strict amounts of efficiencies and tons of surveillance in the workplace —> “worker control”
List the reasons why employers strictly monitor their employees
1) to measure the productivity and resources (i.e. meeting quotas and to reward and punish them accordingly)
2) safety of employees
3) protect from legal liabilities
4) study and improve work conditions
5) protect corporate interests and trade secrets (views employees as people who are untrustworthy and lazy)
What are 3 types of workplace surveillance? list examples for each
1) performance: constant monitoring to measure employees ability to complete tasks efficiently (eg. keystroke surveillance, supervisor, output measurements, and quotas)
2) Behaviour: Constant monitoring to oversee an employee’s actions (eg. CCTV, pagers/ work cellphones, social media tracking)
3) personal characteristics: infrequent measurements of an employees lifestyle, identity, and history (eg. social media tracking and web search surveillance)
How does workplace surveillance affect the lives of employees?
the social media accounts of some employees become like a resume because employers check it so often, and also has a panoptic effect because it disciplines the employees outside of work
What are 3 main concerns with workplace surveillance?
1) More personal data:
- invasion of privacy, and always a tendency to change your lifestyle for the sake of your employer
2) More biometrics (stats gathered on the psychological and behavioural characteristics about the employee based on computer usage)
3) More covert surveillance
- constantly being monitored
- not knowing when you’re being watched or where (panoptic effect)
- Destroys workplace environment
- destroys creativity due to increased discipline (assembly line mentality)
How can risks and concerns be avoided?
- changing how constant the surveillance upon employees is
- telling employers to not judge an employee’s lifestyle solely through surveillance
Define Surveillance creep?
surveillance creep is when methods of surveillance and monitoring are used for things beyond what they’re intended to be used for
