Home office: When supervisors monitor their employees
A study by VMWare in Germany shows a significant loss of trust and increased turnover in the workforce when employees are monitored in the home office.
According to a study by multi-cloud service provider VMware, the implementation of remote monitoring measures being pushed by many companies is jeopardizing the trust of employees working in home offices and increasing their fluctuation. According to the study, 60 percent of the German companies surveyed have either already introduced or are planning to introduce measures to monitor employee productivity since the switch to hybrid forms of working.
Secret spying
Monitoring email (41 percent), collaboration tools (41 percent) and web browsing (30 percent), as well as video surveillance (30 percent), webcams (25 percent) and keylogger software (25 percent) are often commonplace. However, 34 percent of companies that have already implemented device monitoring and 45 percent of those currently doing so are seeing increased or even dramatically increased employee turnover, according to the report.
Monitoring is often not communicated transparently, the study shows. One tenth of employees (30 percent) do not know whether their company has introduced systems to monitor productivity on their devices.
"A lack of transparency, surreptitious measurement and hidden control can quickly erode employee trust and lead to talented and motivated employees preferring to quit in a highly competitive and challenging skills market," Ralf Gegg, Head of Sales, End-User Computing Division at VMware, concludes, commenting on the study results.
