The New Ways Your Boss Is Spying on You

It’s not just email. Employers are mining the data their workers generate to figure out what they’re up to, and with whom. There’s almost nothing you can do about it.

... Employers are parsing those interactions to learn who is influential, which teams are most productive and who is a flight risk.

... to examine data on the sender, recipient and timing of over 130 million emails—not the content of the messages—from more than 20,000 U.S. employees to see what dots it could connect about relationships.

It’s not just emails that are being tallied and analyzed. Companies are increasingly sifting through texts, Slack chats and, in some cases, recorded and transcribed phone calls on mobile devices.

“I’m not all tinfoil hat or anything,” she says, noting that she tries to avoid sharing personal data online altogether.

One of the newest frontiers is dissecting phone calls and conference room conversations. In some cases, tonal analysis can help diagnose culture issues on a team, showing who dominates conversations,

Teramind deploys a suite of software that can take a live look at employees’ screens, capture real-time keystrokes, record video of their activities and break down how they spend their time. ...can also classify employees’ hours as productive or unproductive, based on activities like scrolling through Facebook.

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A case could be made that they are creating a “hostile” work environment. I have never read about it, but I believe there is something that is called “social lubricant” in a work environment. That is the interaction with people (and customers) that are not directly productive. It is the sharing of information and allows bonding. People are more likely to go out of their way to help people they like (and the opposite is true). I think bad things happen when a company concentrates on the bottom line and ignores everything else. One good example I have seen (and read about) is the way they treat “dead wood”. That is the employee that has been there the longest and has seen all the changes and more importantly can remember how to “fix” the old stuff. I call this dead wood the CORPORATE MEMORY. With out it a company often has to re-invent the wheel since no one remembers how to keep the old one working. In the end, an employee can help a company grow or they can destroy it (just by following the rules as they are written).

I get flak for intentionally carrying a “dumb” flip phone. I can make calls and send and receive texts. Can’t install apps, and no GPS. But how will I do everything? I’ll check the email and log in remotely when I get home, if I chose to. No, you can’t make me pull over in the car and review it right now, no, I can’t review it while I’m at a kid event. I get push back and strange looks when I say I cannot install your app to get coupons and perform bank transactions. Then again, my data can’t be stolen via them. It is a major step toward better IT security. I can’t help the OPM and Experian hacks that did affect us. My kids intentionally have the same dumb flip phones. You can call. You can text. You can’t send a sexting photo, and the ones someone tries to send are so low a resolution that it isn’t worth it. The inability to read emojis well forces them to TALK or spell out ideas to people. My kids are repeatedly asked, “Are you being punished? Or is your iPhone just in the shop?”

I’m the same way. The only time I miss a smart phone is when I’m out and about and need to see if there’s a particular store/shop or closing hours, etc. For that I just call a friend or family and ask them to do a search on their computer which I know they are sitting in front of.

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Source: Freerepublic.com

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