Electronic Monitoring Of Employees Goes Full-Time

Intensive workplace surveillance of workers has become a business, and it’s doing well. One product is essentially a smart badge, as opposed to the static ID badges that some employees have long been required to wear. Some devices can track every move and hear every word, although what they actually do in particular cases and how it will be used varies. A New York Times article on the subject notes that employee theft is one obvious subject of interest, but there are others, including teasing out employee behaviors that increase sales or productivity. Looming overall are the obvious major privacy issues. Reporter Steve Lohr also writes an accompanying article that looks at a complicating trend, referred to as “the transparency paradox”: Some research finds that giving worker more privacy and freedom increases productivity.