Best of 2022: ‘Don’t watch Netflix’ - How WFH has increased employee surveillance and data risks

The concept of remote working, such as working from home or anywhere outside of the standard office environment, has become a reality for workers around the world.

This is one of the prevalent side effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, where it has accelerated the adoption of work-from-home (WFH) arrangements across multiple industries, in multiple markets.

In the work cultures of certain countries, WFH has long been resisted by employers; they simply believe that the digital distractions of the Internet, such as streaming platforms, would divide the attention of their workers and lead to lowered productivity.

Hence, with the acceleration of remote work, employee surveillance software has also seen immense growth during the pandemic. A survey noted that global demand for surveillance software had increased by 56% since the start of the pandemic, as compared to 2019.

Excessive surveillance, a predicted trend of 2022

In fact, Straits Interactive CEO Kevin Shepherdson had predicted that work-from-home monitoring would raise serious concerns over privacy, part of the key trends for 2022 forecast.

“I call this the ‘Don’t watch Netflix’ Employer Syndrome,” he said. “You need to take this surveillance into account as part of your data protection and privacy practices, as many employers may be concerned whether you are really doing work at home.”

Many of these remote monitoring software, however, are perceived to be quite intrusive to one’s privacy. To ensure that an employee is really putting in the work at home, such software may monitor keystrokes, take screenshots every few minutes and even take photos of the employee at regular time intervals.

The WFH environment really poses several challenges for companies. How do they ensure that the sensitive information of staff and clients are kept safe when employees work on their home networks? And, how can employee monitoring be achieved without compromising the individual’s right to privacy?

Atty Jon Bello is a data privacy specialist and former in-house counsel of a multinational business process outsourcing (BPO) company in the Philippines. Having worked for a company with 40,000 employees across 19 sites in the country, the Manila-based Bello has tremendous experience in operationalising data privacy management.

In 2021, he was named Privacy Advocate of the Year by the National Privacy Commission in the Philippines. There are some specific challenges that arise in a WFH setting, said Bello, citing the dangers of surveillance software that employs artificial intelligence, or AI.

Software that can track your eyes and your fingers

The more sophisticated monitoring technologies, for instance, can track an employee’s eyeballs, keystrokes, and movements. If an employee looks in a different direction, or if the AI detects another person passing by, the employee gets shut out of the system and could have compensation withheld for those minutes lost.

Hourly-paid employees can be docked income for simply taking their eyes off their screen. Not to mention that such AI technologies also intrude upon the privacy of the employees’ family, should they come within range of the camera.

The main problem, Bello shared, is that with so much surveillance going on, would privacy even matter anymore? In fact, he believes that, in some countries, it’s important to develop a wider consciousness about “privacy culture”.

“[In the Philippine language], there is no such concept [as privacy],” he said. “The danger there is that we have yet to achieve, as a society, a certain level of privacy maturity. Then you have surveillance and artificial intelligence, so you’re definitely losing that sense of privacy and you’re accepting that it’s part of life. So will privacy matter anymore after this surveillance?”

Solutions for safe and appropriate employee monitoring

The challenges brought forth by the WFH setting are complex problems. Organisations must assess the impact and risks that come with the new setting, to ensure that all personal data in the organisation’s possession are protected, be it customer or employee data.

They must also appoint a team that will conduct these assessments, develop policies and enforce them to ensure that no privacy rights are infringed.

Despite the fact that surveillance software may appear to offer a solution to the challenges of WFH, it also produces new problems. Collecting this vast amount of employee data not only intrudes on the privacy of the home, but also exposes the organisation to greater risks of a data breach.

“Monitoring for productivity must not affect the privacy of other parties in the WFH environment. There are ways to protect the data without being too intrusive,” he said.

“Besides, if the employee really wants to get data from you, you can’t catch the employee and prevent him or her from doing it. Sometimes you just need to trust the employee at the end of the day to do the right thing.”

If you would like to know more on how to develop a data protection management programme for your organisation, click here.

We also have several data protection consultants who can help you craft a data protection management programme for your organisation. You may contact us at sales@straitsinteractive.com and a consultant will get in touch with you.

This article was originally published on 18 March 2022.