A survey from cybersecurity firm Kaspersky revealed that employers’ lack of trust in their workers correlates with the spike in surveillance software usage.
However, the implementation of this technology has actually hurt employee morale as they feel the need to work longer hours to seem visible to their higher-ups.
The survey of 2,000 full-time UK workers revealed that, while 80% of managers said they trust their employees to work from home, presenteeism is forcing them to feel like they must work longer hours and be available all times of the day.
Additionally, 25% admit they have been working even harder from home for fear of being perceived as lazy. Even more, this number jumps to 40% for those who have monitoring software on their devices.
While surveilling employees is working for companies looking to meet specific quotas, there is a high risk of businesses losing their workers.
Some respondents even admitted to using their personal phones to text colleagues to avoid being monitored by senior management.
“Businesses need to realise that excessive employee surveillance is leading to unhealthy employee behaviours, with people feeling the need to work longer hours, and experiencing increased stress levels in their bid to keep up appearances,” said David Emm, principal security researcher at Kaspersky. “It also creates issues from a security perspective, as employees using non-sanctioned personal devices for work tasks increases the vulnerability of corporate data and assets to hackers.”
