Artificial-Intelligence Surveillance Tool for Employers

Some new firms are giving employers a tool, which will help keep tabs on their employees. Enable is one of them. Nevertheless, critics fear that kind of surveillance is undermining trust.

Millions of people across the globe stopped going into offices and began doing their jobs from home over the last few months. Those workers might be out of sight for managers. Nevertheless, they are not out of mind. The upheaval has been accompanied by a reported spike in the use of surveillance software. That tool lets employers track what their employees do and how long they spend doing it.

Companies asked remote workers to install a variety of such tools. Hubstaff is a software that records the websites that they visit, mouse movements, and keyboard strokes. Moreover, they take videos of users’ screens, Time Doctor goes further. It can also take a picture with a webcam every 10 minutes to check that employees are at their computers. Isaak is a tool made by U.K. firm Status Today. It monitors interactions between employees to identify who is being more collaborative. Then, it combines that data with information from personnel files to identify individuals who are making the greatest difference.

Moreover, one firm wants to go even further. It develops machine-learning software to measure how quickly employees are completing various tasks. Furthermore, it also suggests ways to make them quicker at doing them. The tool then gives each person a score of productivity. Then, managers can use this to identify those employees who are most worth retaining and those who are not.

Surveillance Tool

Critics argue that workplace surveillance damages morale and undermines trust. Groups supporting workers’ rights say that such systems must only be installed after consulting employees. Cori Crider is a United Kingdom-based lawyer and cofounder of Foxglove. It is a nonprofit legal firm that works to halt big companies and governments misusing technology. He said that it could create a great increase in the imbalance of power between the management and workers. Crider also added that workers have less ability to keep management responsible.

After coaching CEOs for twenty years, Weir founded Enable in 2018.

The firm is already providing its software to several large organizations across the globe. This includes the Omnicom Media Group and Dubai customs agency, a corporate communications company, and a multinational company. Nevertheless, Weir also claims to be in late-stage talks with CVS Health and Delta airlines. CVS Health is a United States healthcare, and pharmacy chain ranked #5 on the Fortune 500. Neither company commented on if or when they are preparing for system deployment.

Weir said that it has been getting four times as many inquiries since they closed down offices because of the pandemic. He said that he has never seen anything like this.

Furthermore, Crider added that bosses were seeking to wring out every drop of productivity. Moreover, they have tried to force productivity out of their workers since before computers existed. Nevertheless, the granularity of the surveillance now available is like nothing we have ever seen before.

Of course, it is not a surprise that this level of detail is attractive to employers.