The oppressiveness of corporate surveillance culture

Today’s salaried employee does not need to consult fiction to know that Big Brother is watching them since surveillance software now polices workers’ productivity. An article written by CBC’s Kevin Maimann, with industry insights from Tara Behrend, has noticed that TD Bank and Bell are installing software into company hardware that monitors screen time and quantifies productivity. With all of this, it is taking an increasing toll on the mental health of workers. In face of creeping corporate authoritarianism, my reaction sides with the worker: the act of surveilling worker productivity is dehumanizing as it incentivizes the maltreatment of workers. 

Surveillance software, such as Bell’s Verint, is indiscriminate. It does not count off-screen work in its productivity metrics. Instead, as confessed by a Bell employee to CBC News, the software utilizes “‘occupancy’ or ‘effectiveness’’’ as productivity metrics. Screen time and mouse-movement data is what captures their so-called “productivity.” But gauging productivity with in-house software this way doesn’t gather enough data to make the right call. As a TD employee confessed in the same article, much of an employee’s daily work requires reading and other tasks not reflected by screen time. Despite the worker being productive offline, the software equates technological in-occupancy to unproductivity, and it does not have sensors to close systematic discrepancies. Punishment by management has used the software’s ignorant outputs as justification.

Even more so, it has been used by management to “shame and belittle” workers by comparing productivity metrics between workers. This dehumanizes the individual worker. The article relates how management at TD is increasingly displaying the software’s outputs at company meetings, which causes “burnout, frustration, and ‘extreme unease’” among employees because low metrics could result in a loss of bonuses, raises, and performance ratings.

The adoption of surveillance technology dehumanizes employees because the software is also indiscriminate to personal circumstances. A worker oppressed by the software cannot have a bad day, otherwise, their metrics will lag behind their peers. If one bad day, the metrics of an employee dip below the average, management can see the statistical dip and possibly even address it in front of everyone in the next meeting, giving no room to save face. 

Instead of getting the whole story, these tracking tools tend to focus only on certain metrics. This, in turn, can incentivize workers to ignore other aspects of their job. Behrend, a professor at Michigan State University’s School of Human Resources and Labour Relations, highlighted the research on monitoring and surveillance tools. The system forces workers to puritanically uphold their metrical standing, which creates “anti-social incentives” such as discouraging screen breaks or helping out a co-worker. Ironically, helping a coworker would likely increase the productivity of the helped. But since there would be a decrease in productivity for the person helping, their own productivity would look worse off according to the system. Even though both activities are beneficial, the software can’t differentiate between not working and taking a break.

To the future salary-person who might be studying at the moment, the workplace of tomorrow is transforming into a dystopia; one where workers are systematically dehumanized and maltreated by surveillance software through anti-social incentives, ignorance, and the demonization of healthy behaviours. Through general awareness of authoritarian practices in the workplace and dissemination of information, tomorrow’s workers can gain the necessary consciousness to push back against the perversiveness of authoritarianism in corporate work culture. The first step is asking what you want your future workplace to look like. Hopefully one that has fewer cameras and monitors, and more compassion and empathy for one another.