When I wrote the December 2020 article I said:
“In 2020, I find it extremely depressing those full-grown adults must be subject to routine surveillance of their activities in order for them to keep their job due to lack of adept leadership in an organisation.”
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I called out the need for a fundamental shift in how we develop real leaders in our organisations. Leaders that provide clear and agreed expectations, provide employees with autonomy, and then get out of the way.
Clearly, that fell on deaf ears. In the words of Ridley Scott, “In space no one can hear you scream.”
My thinking at the time – call me naïve – was that this increase in demand for surveillance software was a knee-jerk reaction to employees suddenly being out-of-sight and bosses not equipped to deal with the unprecedented change. What I didn’t envisage was a continual increase in employee surveillance over the period post pandemic onset and a continuing increase
whilst some employees return to the office.
“What was introduced in the crisis of the pandemic as a short-term remedy for lockdowns and working from home, has quietly become the “new normal” for many Australian workplaces” writes James Purtill for ABC Science
Moath Galeb is Sales Manager at Efficient Lab, a company that makes and sells employee monitoring software called Controlio. The number of Controlio clients has increased two to three times with the pandemic and demand has remained strong in recent months. Galeb says “Even when some companies have returned back to office work, they still rely on employee monitoring software.”
The “new normal” is not limited to Australia. As TOP10VPN reports: “The pandemic has led to a huge rise in the range and sophistication of surveillance technologies being adopted around the world and, as remote work looks set to continue for the foreseeable future, invasive employee surveillance may also be here to stay.”