The monitoring technology that waits for employees when they return to the office

Under-Desk sensors in particular have received a high-profile return, perhaps because they are such a clear piece of security hardware instead of software designed to record work that is carried out on business machines. In the autumn of 2022, students from the Netherlands University Under-Desk sensors produced and removed them produced by Enocean and 'presence detection' and 'people', which were installed in the school's interdisciplinary and engineering complex. The university provost finally announced the students that the department was planning to use the sensors with the Spaceti platform to optimize the desk use.

Occupeye (now owned by FM: Systems), another type under the shopping sensor under the shopping, received a similar reaction from the staff of Barclays Bank and the Telegraph newspaper in London, where employees protested and in some cases physically remove the devices that the time they spent from their office.

Despite the fall-out, Barclays later faced a fine of $ 1.1 billion from the ICO when it turned out that the Sapience's employee had implemented monitoring software in its offices, with the possibility of adding and following individual employees. Perhaps not surprising in the current climate, the same software company now offers “lightweight device level technology” to check compliance with the Retour-To-Office policy, with a dashboard that breaks employee location per office versus remote control for specific departments and teams.

According to the last book by Elizabeth Anderson HijackedWhile the surveillance culture in the workplace and the obsession with the measurement of the efficiency of employees may feel relatively new, it can be traced in the 16th and 17th centuries to the invention of “working ethics” by the Puritans.

“They thought you should work super hard; You should not be stationary if you should be working, “she says. “You can see some elements there that can be developed into a pretty hostile attitude towards employees. The Puritans were obsessed by not wasting time. It was about obtaining certainty of salvation through your behavior. With the Industrial Revolution, the 'No Wasting Time' became a profit -maximizing strategy. Now you are working 24/7 because they can bring you to e -mail. “

However, some important components of the original working ethics have been skewed or lost over time. The Puritans also had strict restrictions on which tasks employers had against their employees: paying a livable wage and offering safe and healthy working conditions.

“You couldn't just rule them Tyrannic, or they said. You had to treat them if you fellow Christians, with dignity and respect. In many ways, the original working ethics was an ethics that increased employees. “

This story originally appeared on Wired.com.