TORONTO -- Imagine if your boss knew every time you logged on to Facebook, fired off a personal email or stepped away from the computer to wrangle your kids while you’re on the clock working from home.
But critics say the software, while perfectly legal in Canada, can be an invasion of privacy and that a pandemic isn’t the time to be cracking down on employees’ productivity, especially when working from home looks vastly different for workers with kids or loved ones to care for.Hubstaff, Time Doctor and ActivTrak are among the more popular employee-monitoring software on the market.
Informing employees isn’t just good practice. Employers are legally required to do so, according to Howard Levitt, senior partner at Levitt LLP, an employment and labour law firm in Toronto. Martin acknowledged that employees may be struggling to keep up with their pre-pandemic workload, but, now more than ever, employers need to be certain they’re meeting their goals.“We’re dealing with an unprecedented situation where a very large number of business will cease to exist in the next few years. There is a lot of understanding that . But at the same time, if someone isn’t doing the work, we need to address that as quickly as possible.
Hubstaff, an Indianapolis-based company that offers this software, has seen a 16 per cent jump in Canadian customers since March 1. That’s relatively low compared to global demand, which has tripled in the same amount of time. Clement said today’s crop of software raises some serious concerns. For instance, he said employers need to justify why it’s necessary for them to take automated screenshots of employees’ computers.
“I would say for the most part, people are decent and honest and want to do a good job and being treated as untrustworthy or potentially untrustworthy by a system that is checking up routinely and often obtrusively erodes that trust. It’s an indication that the employer doesn’t trust the employee. And the inevitable consequence of that is that the employee loses trust in the employer.”
Big Brother is watching you.
Yup hes going to the toilet, omg ya see the size of that thing, hope it flushes.
Fascism
People aren’t putting in a full work day at home.
Where's the trust? I wonder how many of these employers volunteered to pay some home I internet bills.
Kids are getting paid to zoom 🏎
If you need spyware to track whether your people are working or not, you're doing management wrong.