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--:-- John Bickley: The rise of remote work has led more and more companies to use employee monitoring tools to help ensure their employees are actually working and to improve productivity. While the measures have helped some companies see better results, they've also raised some ethical and legal questions. In this episode of Morning Wire, we discuss the rise of remote monitoring, its effectiveness and its effect on employees. I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief John Bickley. It's January 8th, and this is your Sunday edition of Morning Wire.
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--:-- John Bickley: As remote work becomes more popular, companies are trying to ensure productivity and protect their bottom line by more closely monitoring their employees. Here to bring us the story is Daily Wire's Charlotte Pence Bond.
--:-- Charlotte Pence Bond: So, the workplace is obviously changing. We've seen a huge increase in working from home. And now it sounds like companies are implementing some strategies to ensure that workers are staying on task. What does that look like in practice?
--:-- Georgia Howe: Hi, Charlotte. A lot of companies have started using monitoring systems to monitor things like keystrokes and telephone calls. Using technology to monitor employee productivity isn't actually new. It's been a common practice in hourly, lower-paying jobs. Some examples are grocery cashiers at Kroger, drivers for UPS, and Amazon factory workers, where second-by-second tracking became infamous. One former employee detailed his experience at Amazon on YouTube.
--:-- Charlotte Pence Bond: I was a delivery driver. Did I pee in bottles? Yeah. A lot of people did. Most people did. Even the girls. It kind of a necessity with Amazon. You are under extreme time crunch. And if you don't find shortcuts, you will have a very bad day. And so that one of those shortcuts.
--:-- Georgia Howe: But tracking employees has been around for a while. A study from 2001 by the American Management Association found that 80% of major businesses track employee internet use, phone calls, and emails. The biggest watchers were businesses in the finance industry. One of the biggest providers of this tracking software is Hubstaff.
--:-- Charlotte Pence Bond: Here's how they advertise to employers. As you can see, I'm able to easily monitor all of my outsource workers. I can see how long they've been working, when they're working. I can also see detailed reports and screenshots. And then you can also see how active they are. Okay, so if someone just starts the timer and lets it go and walks away for an hour, you'll notice that their activity is going to be very low. Also, the timer is also smart enough to notice that if you're not doing anything on your computer, it'll actually stop.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So it sounds like the software takes screenshots so that they can monitor if the employee is working or, say, browsing on social media. Is that correct?
--:-- Charlotte Pence Bond: That's right. And if there's no activity, some workers have to justify why they were away from the computer. I spoke to Chase Teal, an assistant professor at University of Wyoming and an expert in business ethics. He says Microsoft can monitor workers' movements and even heart rate while they work. Microsoft allows employees to wear a smartwatch, and then it's got this app on it that collects these biometrics, like heart rates, etc. And it can give employees a wellness score.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Now, gathering biometrics seems way above and beyond what a workplace would even need to know, though.
--:-- Charlotte Pence Bond: Right. It would seem that way. One tech company, Three Square Market, even embedded its employees with a rice-sized microchip back in 2017, which worked as a badge. It opened security doors, logged them into computers, and unlocked the copy machine. It was a voluntary program, but they asked employees if they would like to be implanted with a microchip that essentially would act like a company badge, but it was just implanted. But it would also, you know, again, collect information about employees, their whereabouts, their activity level, things like that, their body rhythms, had the potential to do all of those things.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Very extreme. I haven't heard of another example of a company doing something like that. But it gives you an illustration of what kinds of technology exists.
--:-- Charlotte Pence Bond: While monitoring has been around for low jobs for quite a while, what's new is digital observation of highly credentialed professionals. They're being tracked, given grades, and if there are breaks in their work, they can be docked pay or they can potentially lose their job altogether. Now, I know lawyers strictly monitor their time because they bill clients by the hour or even by the minute, but are we also seeing this trend with other white-collar or high-skilled jobs?
--:-- Georgia Howe: Yes, we're seeing increased monitoring with certain physician specialties, academic officials, architects, and even people who work in nursing homes. One example the New York Times highlighted was radiologists. Some radiologists are shown reports of their periods of inactivity and also given insight into how their work compares to their co-workers.
--:-- Charlotte Pence Bond: J.P. Morgan is a big name that also measures how its workers use their time during their work days using a software called Workplace Activity Data Utility. It tracks their time on Zoom calls, when they're in the office, and how much time they use certain applications. Another example is United Health Group, which has a practice where less keyboard activity can impact pay and bonuses. These workers in higher-paying jobs complained about this in much the way workers in blue-collar jobs have spoken out against it in the past.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Barclays Bank in Britain used to send messages to employees that would push them to work harder. One example was a message that said, "not enough time in the zone yesterday." But they abandoned the practice after backlash.
--:-- Charlotte Pence Bond: Now, how does all of this affect worker productivity? Are these trackers actually effective? Research done by the Harvard Business Review showed that workers who were monitored were much more likely to break rules, work slowly on purpose, take breaks that weren't allowed, and even steal office items. They did another study that showed workers who were told they were being tracked were more likely to cheat when completing assignments.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And there is evidence of this. TikTok has videos that provide advice on how to trick the trackers. One way to do that is apparently a mouse jiggler, which makes it look like someone is active.
--:-- Charlotte Pence Bond: Just a PSA for anybody working from home, you can buy a mouse jiggler for your mouse so that it will jiggle your mouse and not exit you out of your work so you can sleep.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Now, from the perspective of companies, it's easy to understand why they're concerned about productivity, especially with everyone working from home. Right. It could be useful and simply unavoidable. Employers can keep better track of people who aren't working in the office.
--:-- Charlotte Pence Bond: Here's that Hubstaff promotional video again. This is a lifesaver. I cannot stress how big this has been for my business because before, you know, I was paying people X number of dollars, you know, as a salary and I would expect them to work 40 hours. But I started to quickly realize, hey, if I'm going to pay you for full-time work, I want to make sure that you're at least coming close to the 40 hours that we decided on. This is a must-have in your business. It helps them find the workers who are working hard and get rid of the ones who are not.
--:-- Georgia Howe: What about the legal angle? Is it legal to monitor your employees like this?
--:-- Charlotte Pence Bond: Interesting you ask. In lots of states, employers basically have free reign to decide how to use these programs to watch their employees. Here's Thiel again on this. The Electronic Communication Privacy Act of 1986 allows employers to monitor employees' written communication, verbal communication, and those provisions of that law have been extended to more advanced forms of workplace monitoring that have been introduced as technology has advanced.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And so what that means is as long as there's a business necessity or there's an employer can demonstrate a business necessity, they have the right to monitor employees in a variety of ways.
--:-- Charlotte Pence Bond: New York has a new law that started this year, which invokes new requirements on private employers that makes them tell employees they're tracking them. Connecticut and Delaware also put laws in place that have to do with watching employees. But attempts to create similar legislation in California stopped going anywhere because business groups pushed back on it, saying it was a job killer.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Cal Chamber, a business advocacy group, said the California bill would actually decrease workers' privacy because it would make employers examine all of the workers' communications to see if the employer is allowed to keep or look at that information. They also said it would eliminate small businesses, quote, for even a good faith mistake due to its excessively punitive enforcement mechanisms.
--:-- Charlotte Pence Bond: As for Amazon, the company did loosen some of its tracking rules. Employees are still monitored, but now managers aren't supposed to examine idle time unless it's longer than 15 minutes, so there has been some movement there.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Now, separate from the remote work angle, you often hear that people are concerned about their devices tracking them. Right, and things like people's locations. Our personal data is stored with companies in ways we often aren't even fully aware of. Apple was actually just sued by two women who said their ex-partners used AirTags to stalk them.
--:-- Charlotte Pence Bond: And a lot of lawmakers and citizens are starting to raise the alarm on how tracking might not be so good for our national security either. So this all might be playing into a broader discomfort with being watched and citizens are pushing back on it.
--:-- Georgia Howe: All right, well, it'll be interesting to see how workplaces adapt to this new work-from-home age. Charlotte, thanks for bringing us this story.
--:-- Charlotte Pence Bond: Thanks for having me on.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That was Daily Wire's Charlotte Pence Bond. And this has been a special episode of Morning Wire. From all of us here at Morning Wire, we hope you're enjoying the show. Did you know that if you subscribe to Daily Wire Plus, you can get access to all Daily Wire has to offer, that means news, commentary, documentaries, movies, and so much more. Become a subscriber today. Download the Daily Wire Plus app and take us with you wherever you go.
