I just found out that the EU has a remote workers charter signed by 31 of its MEPs to strengthen remote workers rights and wellbeing which includes... 🥁
Banning employee surveillance software!
This is a good thing. 🧵
Never mind working from home, I have experienced the inhumane, dystopian style of management that creates *in the office*!! In this case, it was Microsoft (yes MICROSOFT not some obscure little company with some sick narrow ideology) program, Power BI.
In a previous job, I will never forget being in a performance review at 5am (I did night shifts) after concerns had been raised about my productivity, and all I could think of to justify it was my mental health.
I was literally asked to say exactly what was wrong with my mental health in specific, non-consecutive hours of my shift where Power BI's algorithm showed a drop in my real-time productivity and suggest solutions that could be put in place to prevent the issue re-occurring.
Worse still, the environment and the reality that creates, makes that sound like a perfectly reasonable question to be asked. I was initially taken aback and tried to sidestep the question. I felt gaslit into thinking failure to answer would just be "making excuses".
Holding employees accountable for their productivity via remote algorithmic micro-managing to achieve the numbers, make disciplinary decisions, bonuses and promotions were all that mattered with employee surveillance software.
Everything else became secondary. Nothing was sacred.
I'd heard via a slip of the tongue from an otherwise lovely shift leader, that this company encouraged managers to think about time, money, productivity and resources on a minute to minute scale. It's the Amazon warehouse mentality.
You see it from their perspective. Employee surveillance software is brilliant. It gets them exactly what they want. The impact it has on those that are surveilled, however, not one iota of thought given to it.
In short...
Ban employee surveillance software.
I know the UK has left the EU, but they're still a regulatory superpower. It's their law to standardise USB-C cables across all devices (including iPhones) that has caused it to happen more or less everywhere else anyway.
If an employee's unique qualities, strengths, quirks, diversity, perspectives, values and even their struggles are a factor to a company when they decide who to offer a job to in the first place, they should continue to be a factor throughout their employment.
We👏are👏not👏robots!👏
Ben CG 🕊️