I keep feeling like someone’s watching me …

The right and wrong of surveillance in the workplace,

Contributed by iFacts
Removing your people risk

A kind of paranoia is stealthily finding its way into the workplaces of the world's developed nations, an echo of George Orwell's novel 1984 in a rebirth of Big Brother, this time in human and/or digital form. This kind of creepiness is increasingly worrying US workers who are under workplace surveillance.

Answers investigators are trying to find centre on whether or not intelligence gathering in the workplace, overtly or covertly, is ethical and/or legal. Some of the more cynical maintain that if workers are innocent of underhanded dealings, they won't mind being spied upon and might even enjoy displaying their morality. More liberal indignation insists that privacy is a human and civic right and that no-one or ‘no thing’ should be permitted to invade it.

That point of view, however, is not universally held and even exists in different layers depending on where in the world you happen to be. The law and the ethicists in Japan, for example, regard the issue differently than they do in the United States. To confound matters even further, the definition of 'privacy' differs widely wherever you go. In South Africa, spying on someone is not a crime, but you may still find yourself on the wrong side of an expensive civil suit.

Some sort of universality occurs in the separation of surveillance of employees in the workplace and outside of it. The majority of such laws state implicitly that employers must limit their intelligence gathering to work related areas. For example, tracing employees’ company telephones, cell phones and accessing e-mail accounts are permissible, but tapping home phones or hacking into their private e-mail systems are not. In most jurisdictions employers are not required to inform their staff that they are being surreptitiously monitored and it is up to management to decide whether or not to inform employees that they are being watched. An argument for the 'yes' brigade is that staff members will be less inclined to dishonesty if they knew they were on camera. The opposing view maintains that overt surveillance simply drives the bad element underground, making it more difficult to identify the culprits and/or prove any wrongdoing.

Companies who do not have workplace surveillance and are upfront about their policy/intention to install such surveillance, are likely to encounter a divided opinion amongst their workforce on the matter, resulting in long, wrangling delays and unhappiness. The employer’s job is to minimise the number of unsatisfied workers by convincing them that monitoring is ultimately beneficial. What about new employees? Should an employer tell new staff members that they will be under surveillance, or not?

How this scenario is unfolding is of as much interest to labour unions as it is to management. Bosses are finding that a well established, wide-coverage picture and sound system of workforce activity can often yield valuable information on labour union matters. Shop stewards worry that such loosely gathered intelligence can forewarn managers of impending union activity and even forestall shop floor action. Labour spies recruited by labour unions or employers with a similar goal can be employed to find out what the other is thinking or doing.

According to Wikipedia, a labour spy is someone recruited or employed to gather intelligence, commit sabotage, sow dissent or engage in other such activities, typically within a corporate entity.
Does it ever get that far in South Africa? Undoubtedly, and there are many case histories to prove it.
Labour spying and industrial espionage are discreet bedfellows and there is little to differentiate their behaviour in reaping the information or end result they require. Each uses stealth to gather intellectual and sensitive data, often in an unethical manner, with the aim of getting an edge over 'the other side'.

In South Africa labour spying or industrial espionage is not unlawful in itself, but perpetrators could be nabbed for other illegal activities such as theft or trespassing. The underlying philosophy of industrial espionage is: why spend years and millions of Rands on research and development or developing a customer base when you can bribe an employee in the competitor's camp, tap their telephones or bug their offices for much less?

Workplace surveillance is a complex and fascinating subject that concerns us all and we will continue to explore this concept in future editorials.

iFacts
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