US companies monitor their employees in the home office

US companies monitor their employees in the home office

In America, too, more and more people are working from home. There are various reasons for this. On the one hand, everything is becoming more expensive and businesses have to save money. On the other hand, many people were forced to work from home during the corona pandemic. But employers do not give their employees complete freedom. Instead, they use different measures to monitor them and to check whether they are actually doing their job.

Deceptive freedom

Many people who work in a home office benefit from this and are happy that they no longer have to drive to work every day. Instead, they have their workplace directly on site and save long waiting times at the train station or in the car. But the new freedom is deceptive. Because many employers monitor their employees. Sometimes they tell them about it, and sometimes it happens unnoticed. Then the new freedom can quickly become a problem. After all, the employer sees what exactly was done on the PC and how many hours someone was working.

Work performance decreases in the home office

If you work from home, you have to organize yourself, which is not easy. Thus, the work performance of many people decreases very quickly. And the fact that many employees are being monitored when they work at home can further promote this. Those who know they are being watched can quickly come under pressure and then make more mistakes. It is therefore not always beneficial to monitor employees.

For example, there is software that automatically takes screenshots and also provides an insight into business emails. These programs snoop quite deeply and check the employees every time they use them. In some cases, it is even possible to record the sounds in the home office, so that the boss can hear what the employees are discussing with customers in the home office.

It is even worse when the webcam can be accessed. Thus, it sometimes shoots a photo every ten minutes, which further restricts privacy. Therefore, every employee who has the choice between working at the company or in the home office should carefully consider which variant he prefers and which advantages are more important to him.