HR Industry News

Big Brother causing stress for UK workers

— 10 January 2008 —

Employees are feeling increasingly stressed by online surveillance at work, according to research.

A survey for the Economic and Social Research Council found that 20% of managers are monitoring their employees with computer-based systems. Most admit that the surveillance is performance-related.

Bosses are frequently looking at performance targets and monitor details of phone calls, tasks, sales and deliveries using metrics systems. Many also admitted to monitoring staff for wasting time on social networking sites such as Facebook.

The most commonly used system involves recording conversations in call centres for training purposes, but Dr Patrick McGovern of the London School of Economics, who co-directed the study, said that the trend was extending to other domains.

“People are having to register every piece of work they do. Where your work is routinely recorded electronically […] there’s a sense that you are becoming an appendage of a machine.”

“The people who work under this sort of monitoring were more likely to report work strains like feeling exhausted at the end of the day.”

The survey of 2,000 employers across all industry sectors, found that work-related stress rose by 7.5% in monitored workplaces, with peaks among administrative and white-collar staff in call centres.

Employers do have a duty of care for work surveillance but there is a thin line between this and micro-managing workflows. As long as the work is done, the most enlightened employers operate flexible working and work-life policies but this may not be as attractive in process-oriented arenas such as contact centres. Every effort should be made to enhance staff attraction and retention.Paul Avis, Ceridian LifeWorks

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