@chai2,
chai2 wrote:
Cycloptichorn wrote:
Absolutely not. Hidden cameras? **** that noise!
Cycloptichorn
You don't say why.
What is your objection?
Not because I plan on anything nefarious per se, but because it's an invasion of my others' personal privacy. If there's a reason to have a camera- like over a register or something - fine. But without a compelling reason, without a specific thing that needs video surveillance to protect, it's just bullshit on the part of the company.
I wouldn't work for a company that aggressively monitored my internet use, that randomly drug tested, that did any of that crap. I'd rather not live life under the lens.
Cycloptichorn
I've been an IT manager in several different size companies and as you would guess I have an opinion on the internet monitoring subject. It really amazes me that people think that companies should not be monitoring internet usage. Today, if they are responsible, they really have no choice. There are so many disruptive and potentially libelous sites out there that companies must make an effort to keep these sites from interfering with their business. A simple, clear case is porn sites that I hope all would agree have no place in the work place. In my last position, we had a very clearly worded internet usage statement that all of our computer users had to sign, in which they agreed to not use their computers for access to non work related sites. We ended up putting in monitoring equipment that maintained a list of sites visited by each PC. The PCs were owned by the company and we made it clear up front that we were monitoring usage. The computers were intended for work related activities, period. You would be amazed at the activity we collected. People in fairly high levels of management spent several hours at a time browsing porn sites I would not want to be associated with. The list of folks that spent several hours accessing their bank accounts online was also long.
I expected there to be issues but I thought they would be with just a few people. I was surprised at how widespread the abuse was.
Many people see their workplace as an extension of their home. In my mind, this is clearly wrong. Your employer deserves you best efforts and efficient use of your time.
We ended up blocking questionable sites and put up with a lot of grumbling. The company ended up spending thousands of dollars protecting itself from it's own employees. Money which could have been spent on something more productive.
When you are at work, being paid, your situation is not private, other than probably in a rest room.
@IRFRANK,
I'd agree in some respects, but it really depends on the job and the particulars of the job. My company for many of the reasons you site, does block certain websites. I have no issue with that. They also allow internet use for personal reasons - not to abuse, but realizes sometimes you take a break during the day. Sometimes you put in more than the regular 9 - 5 hours. So when you have down time, what is the big deal.
I think as long as you have professional hard working people and they get their work done timely and of high quality who the heck would get upset at getting a great buy on Black Friday over the internet.
@IRFRANK,
Quote:We ended up blocking questionable sites and put up with a lot of grumbling. The company ended up spending thousands of dollars protecting itself from it's own employees. Money which could have been spent on something more productive.
Do you honestly think that, at the end of the day, any real utility or value was added to your company by the decision to do this? At all? Was there any clear evidence that the companies you were associated with were in any actual danger - and I mean real danger - by the sites people were accessing?
Did you have specific complaints about what people were looking at? Were they not meeting some performance goal in some way? Without some clear evidence of a direct
need to snoop on people's usage, I find it to be distasteful and counter-productive in the extreme.
I mean hell, I could be making a personal phone call on company time. Better bug my calls just to make sure I'm not. I took home a box of paper clips the other day, too. Unacceptable, right? Better start putting cameras in the supply room....
What you are describing is a world I want no part of, at all. Work takes up a huge amount of my time. It intrudes into my personal life all the time. The concept that one's personal life can't intrude into work - ever - is a little one-sided to me.
Cycloptichorn
@Linkat,
Quote:I think as long as you have professional hard working people and they get their work done timely and of high quality who the heck would get upset at getting a great buy on Black Friday over the internet.
I'd agree with that. And folks doing such browsing or occasional personal use were not under scrutiny. The abuse I am talking about involved hours in a day.
@Cycloptichorn,
Quote:Do you honestly think that, at the end of the day, any real utility or value was added to your company by the decision to do this? At all? Was there any clear evidence that the companies you were associated with were in any actual danger - and I mean real danger - by the sites people were accessing?
YES. If female coworkers had wandered by and noticed images on some of the sites, that would definitely be call sexual harassment. The company would have been libel. Should they wait for an occurrence to take action?
Did you have specific complaints about what people were looking at? Were they not meeting some performance goal in some way? Without some clear evidence of a direct need to snoop on people's usage, I find it to be distasteful and counter-productive in the extreme.
You may find it distasteful, but I find it distasteful that a coworker would spend 2 hours out of a day browsing porn, all the while complaining about not having enough time to get the job done. The motivation was not based upon any need to snoop on people, there had been complaints of workers using the computer for personal use for significant periods of time.
I mean hell, I could be making a personal phone call on company time. Better bug my calls just to make sure I'm not. I took home a box of paper clips the other day, too. Unacceptable, right? Better start putting cameras in the supply room....
What you are describing is a world I want no part of, at all. Work takes up a huge amount of my time. It intrudes into my personal life all the time. The concept that one's personal life can't intrude into work - ever - is a little one-sided to me.
I understand your feelings, but the part you don't get is the side of having responsibility for the workplace. Times have changed. We don't allow pictures of naked women in the machine shop any longer either.
I'm not saying you can't spend a few minutes a day browsing the news. I would not complain about that or limit that. Certainly, I've done that myself. And I understand that some jobs don't end at 5pm. Mind didn't. Yes, I often got phone calls on second shift about computer problems, and I'd log in at home and fix them. That was my job. That didn't give me the right to spend 2 hours the next day at work doing personal business.
The meaningless amounts of time you are mentioning are not and were not the issue. What I was surprised to find was the hours people were spending on their company computer doing things they shouldn't be doing at work. And yes, that is a supervision problem, not a computer problem.
@Cycloptichorn,
Cycloptichorn wrote:Not because I plan on anything nefarious per se, but because it's an invasion of my others' personal privacy.
when at work, I don't think you have any right to expect privacy
@Cycloptichorn,
damn good thing... they'd find out how much of your day you spent here!
@ehBeth,
i'd go as far to say, outside of your house you don't have a definite right to expect privacy
@Cycloptichorn,
Quote:
I mean hell, I could be making a personal phone call on company time. Better bug my calls just to make sure I'm not. I took home a box of paper clips the other day, too. Unacceptable, right? Better start putting cameras in the supply room....
Phone calls are monitored on a random basis as a matter of course in the financial industries. Nothing new there.
Back in my lab days, before computers showed up in the workplace, I sometimes worked horrendo long hours, in periods before we/I could hire associates. Every so often I took an hour and half for lunch. That kept me sane and the lab perking.
In land arch, when I started we were individual contractors. Again, with major deadlines that involved serious money, I could work from, say, 8:45 a.m. to 10 p.m. including some weekends, and almost never billed all of that, as we had contract estimates we tried to stay at. I'd take the lunch hour I needed, often a long walk and a stop at the local taco place.
Eventually I had my own small business, and then consulted for the person who became a business partner. We both fooled around on the computer if slow time was going on, or just short breaks. Some of the fooling around was looking at design ideas to like or disagree with (we were landscape designers and art gallery owners) and art. At our lunch time some days, we went through design and art magazines liking some stuff, making fun of a lot, and discussing the whys. Some was, for her, her hobby, and for me, a2k. Again, our computer fooling around was a kind of sanity. We had dogs at work, and we took them for not very long walks, one of us watching the place. When we worked hard, we worked our fingers to the nubs on sketches and plans. Work intensity varied.
We once closed the place to watch the Kentucky Derby at a bar down the street.
The idea of hidden cameras bothers me. I wouldn't go there. I might be able to stand roving cameras that people knew about, if those exist. But let's face it, I wouldn't be the right employee for the place.
On pens, I'm sure I took some. I'm sure I replaced some, probably more than I took.
@ehBeth,
ehBeth wrote:
Cycloptichorn wrote:Not because I plan on anything nefarious per se, but because it's an invasion of my others' personal privacy.
when at work, I don't think you have any right to expect privacy
100% wrong. Couldn't disagree more. None of my rights change at all when I step through the door of my office building.
As I said above, the question is one of reasonable need. If there's a reasonable need for a camera or a monitoring device, fine. If there's not, then not so fine. It's not as cut-and-dry as you seem to say here.
Cycloptichorn
@ehBeth,
ehBeth wrote:
Quote:
I mean hell, I could be making a personal phone call on company time. Better bug my calls just to make sure I'm not. I took home a box of paper clips the other day, too. Unacceptable, right? Better start putting cameras in the supply room....
Phone calls are monitored on a random basis as a matter of course in the financial industries. Nothing new there.
I doubt it saves anyone any money at all. Costs a lot to monitor phone calls. I think it's mostly a device for managers to inflate their self-importance.
Cycloptichorn
@IRFRANK,
Quote:The meaningless amounts of time you are mentioning are not and were not the issue. What I was surprised to find was the hours people were spending on their company computer doing things they shouldn't be doing at work. And yes, that is a supervision problem, not a computer problem.
Yup. This is what gets me at the end of the day; the reasons you gave for taking action are great reasons, but they could have been more easily solved by firing the guy involved and making it clear that the next person caught is getting his ass fired too. Instead, you now have a whole group of people who can't check their facebook when they have a free minute. Increases dissatisfaction across the board and I highly doubt there's any corollary increase in productivity. People who are going to goof off are going to do it no matter what one tries to do.
The computer problems are used to avoid supervision problems, in my opinion. I understand why, but what ends up happening isn't something I like to be a part of.
I totally understand your position on this issue, but it's just difficult to reconcile with my beliefs regarding privacy. I should mention that I have had a few bad experiences in truly tyrannical offices in the past, which have definitely colored my viewpoint on this; places that micro-managed everything and had people who did nothing but snoop on other employees and rat them out to the bosses over any infraction at all. Horrid.
Cycloptichorn
@Cycloptichorn,
Quote:places that micro-managed everything and had people who did nothing but snoop on other employees and rat them out to the bosses over any infraction at all.
I wouldn't want to be a part of that either. There is a test of reasonableness I think, on both sides. I would agree that that kind of political activity is not productive. It sounds like congress to me.
The size of a company matters also. I worked for a small company, 5 people, and we would never spend resources worrying about who took pens or what we did with our computers. But, it was obvious who was contributing and who wasn't. With larger organizations comes bureaucracy that like it or not makes performance less clear and abuse easier.
Believe me, I much preferred the small company, and I will say I worked my hardest while there. We all did.
Well the thread seems to have expanded a bit to include not only the use of hidden cameras, but monitoring of websites and the concept of "time theft".
I side more with Cycloptichorn than IRFrank. The costs associated with monitoring employees every move is in my opinion much higher than training and empowering good employees.
@IRFrank
Do you believe it takes every person in the world the same amount of time to perform the same job? Take two of my staff that have the exact same job classification. One has a masters degree, good work ethic, is proactive, and very efficient. The other, not so much. If I give them both the same task she will complete the task in half the time, but she gets paid the exact same. So do I penalize her if she wants to surf the web, read a book, watch tv? What if the lesser employee complains, should I then install a hidden camera to catch the good employee "wasting time"?
A standard work year is 2080 hours. There are employees below standards that in theory should be fired. Then you have the employees that "set the bar" that meet the standard. These are in my opinion the employees that are required to work 2080 hours and should in theory be penalized if they "waste time". But all other employees, those that perform above the standard have earned the right to use remaining time as they please, up to and including going home. If they want to work and do more for the company great, maybe it will help them get promoted to a more challenging position, but if they choose to not to pursue that option, to basically meet the standard then that is their choice. Obviously in some positions you cannot physically leave, but any salaried position would most likely meet that standard.
@DrDick,
What about the times when you are not officially at work, but a solution about a problem at work pops into your head?
We have all stood in a grocery line, and suddenly, out of nowhere, a lightbulb comes on and we realize what we could/should do about something you are working on. It goes forward from there. You are so delighted with your inspiration, you turn it around in your mind, create a process, make adjustments, come up with a few different methods to test. All while we are pumping our gas, driving down the road, standing in line. For me, ideas tend to percolate to the surface while I'm showering.
Should that be considered in your 2080 hours a year?
Oh!
I actually thought about this thread last night, relating to the above.
In many cases, perhaps jobs could be paid for the results produced, regardless the the time spent.
@chai2,
chai2 wrote:
Oh!
I actually thought about this thread last night, relating to the above.
In many cases, perhaps jobs could be paid for the results produced, regardless the the time spent.
In some cases (such as mine), that's exactly the metric that is used. My supervisor wants everything to be 100% tight and for future problems to be anticipated and solved in advance. For everyone to stay happy and for the money to keep flowing, for our auditors to be happy and for our customers and associates to have a high opinion of our work product and reliability.
As long as that's the case, he/she couldn't care less what I actually do. And it gives me the flexibility and room to employ creative solutions in a relaxed environment.
Of course, the flipside? If things aren't going right, you have to explain why they aren't... and why you've been spending time on other stuff.
Cycloptichorn
Well, I'd say the metric is NOT being used in your case, since it only seems to flowin one direction.
