Working from home often gives me a sense of freedom and independence. Sure, sometimes I miss water cooler gossip and the camaraderie of co-working, but I really love never having to worry about my sometimes NSFW lunch break scrolling. Unfortunately, for many workers, the sense of agency that comes with WFH is something of a mirage, because more and more employers are secretly monitoring their employees at home.
According to new data released this week by software company VMWare, 70% of employers surveyed were either already using or were planning on using monitoring technology to track their employees. The same report found that 24% of employees didn’t know whether their employers were using tracking software or not, which is kind of terrifying. It’s one thing to be aware that your boss is keeping tabs on your productivity, but it’s quite another for a company to keep tabs on you without your knowledge or consent.
I want to believe that the number of organizations willing to spy on their workers is pretty small, but unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the case. The practice of monitoring seems to be pretty widespread since the survey included 7,600 respondents around the world, consisting of both employers and employees in companies that employ 500 or more people.
Not only that, but this study isn’t the first of its kind. Since the beginning of the pandemic, there has been a massive increase in the demand for monitoring software and a subsequent rash of research on the...
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