New ways your boss could be keeping tabs on you
Companies are monitoring their employees more closely than ever. Today's technology enables managers to go far beyond the age-old clock-in/clock-out tools, according to NewYorker.com editor Nicholas Thompson.
"A lot of companies are also tracking employees through apps on their phones. When they leave they can be aware of where they go," Thompson said Friday on "CBS This Morning."
And it doesn't end there.
"Some companies are actually tracking all the sites (employees) visit on their browsers, every stroke they put as they type it in," he said.
Most often, managers use the technology to gauge employees' productivity, help workers focus and measure how they spend their time on the clock.
"It's a lot simpler and you can look and say, 'This project took longer than expected.' 'Why did it take longer than expected?' 'Oh, it took longer than expected because a lot of these people who were working on it were coming in late, leaving early or playing fantasy football on their computers all day,'" Thompson said.
More than 20 companies sell software to analyze and monitor employee behavior, according to Bloomberg News, but sometimes that surveillance can go to far.
One California worker alleged in a recent lawsuit she was fired after criticizing and disabling an app on her company-issued phone that tracked her 24/7, CBS MoneyWatch's Aimee Picchi reports.
Such relentless monitoring can have serious affects on the workplace, Thompson warned.
"The real disadvantage and the thing that I don't think we've thought through is what's changing in the American economy is machines and robots taking away jobs," Thompson said. "And what humans can do best is think creatively, think thoughts outside of the box, think things machines can't think, that robots can't think. And to do that you need space, you need some flexibility."
Thompson pointed to the recent New York Times article investigating Amazon's workplace and management techniques as an example of how tracking employees can depress morale.
"Places where a lot of this is used can lead to unhappiness so managers may not know this," he said.
Other companies like Google and Netflix follow a more relaxed school of thought, according to Thompson.
"Netflix says you can take whatever vacation whenever you want," he said. "Google has very relaxed policies on how you spend your time; they try to encourage day-dreaming."