How much has a right to know about you and your boss?
Modern digital technology allows corporations to obtain a lot of personal information about its employees from the behaviors to the results of medical examinations. Does your boss have the right to use the data? And where is the line that cannot be crossed?
If you worked at Ford in 1914, once the user would have hired a private detective to follow you on the way home.
And if you looked in the diner, in the evening quarreled with his wife or did anything that could affect your ability to execute next day professional responsibilities, your supervisor would know about it.
The surveillance of employees was part of Ford policy because the company paid its employees more than competitors.
The largest automaker of the United States at the time raised the salary from 2.39$. up to 5 dollars. the day (today’s equivalent of a 124 dollar), but wanted to hire only exemplary citizens.
Your home should be clean, children can attend school without absences, your savings Bank account to be in the black.
If someone from the plant’s bosses would have seemed that you stood on the slippery slope, you not only would not get the increase, but in General could lose his job.
“Operation Big brother” launched by the Department of sociological policy of the Corporation Ford. Inspectors were given no warning to appear on the doorstep of any employee.
The goal was to “promote the health, safety, and comfort of employees,” he said in an internal document.
And, in fairness, the Department is really engaged in the welfare Mordovtsev, offering them a different assistance, from medical services to courses homemaking.
The programme was carried out for eight years. It was costly, in addition, many of the employees resented her paternalism and invasion of privacy.
Today for most of us, such interference seems absolutely unacceptable. What is the attitude to work can have the behavior of my child, as your Bank account or relationship with a loved one?
However, today many employers are trying to control the lives of their employees outside the office or shop, and digital technologies hurry to help them.
Detailed information about your professional and personal life, your activities and habits is stored in the accounts of social networks and other computer programs and applications that you use.
Question: does the right of the employer to use the data? And if so, where is the line that cannot be crossed?
The rating of the worker
We are constantly under close surveillance. Expensive tickets I recently purchased, already appear in my credit history.
The fact that I stopped running every morning, recorded by a fitness app on my smartphone. And if it was tied to my insurance policy, this is would affect the cost of insurance.
Facebook knows that I love beer, and so gives me a lot of ads of hipster pubs.
One website recently said that I take the 410-th place among the most influential users of Twitter in Colombia. Think it could improve my credit rating.
Of course, my professional relevance, and efficiency is also to assess and provide me a certain place in the ranking. And we are not talking about the rankings in the online services for freelancers or on crowdfunding platforms and complex system of assessment, which gradually became integral to the corporate culture.
HR departments gather more and more personal data for a thorough assessment of the employees. Computer programs which record your every keystroke, or “smart” coffee machine to get a drink which is possible only with an ID badge, allow the employer to closely monitor employee behavior.
Some analysts suggest that by 2022, this industry will revolve more than $ 1 billion.
The main purpose of the data collection — able to “predict how long the employee is going to remain in this position that helps to influence hiring, firing and retention of valuable employees,” said Phoebe Moore, associate Professor of political economy and technology in the British University of Leicester.
The results of the data collection radically change labor relations, features of work and expectations of both parties.Phoebe Mordicant the Department of political economy and technology in the British University of Leicester
However, this approach does not allow to notice those aspects of work that are impossible to calculate.
How to present in dry figures some invisible things that make my articles more interesting work? For example, meeting for coffee, where I will hear fascinating history, or thinking about stuff on the way to work.
None of these things I do not count in the “rating officer”. “It turns out that that it is impossible to calculate, to collect data simply does not exist,” adds Moore.