I spy. (Who do you spy?)

The other day, I was on a phone call with a client. She has three kids under the age of 5, including a set of 2 1/2 year old twins. I asked her how working from home was going. As you can imagine...

She's worked from home in the past on an occasional basis, but almost all the time when she's done so, the kids are in pre-school/day care, or someone's there taking care of them. These days, those options aren't available. So she and her husband, who is also WFH, take shifts where each is responsible for the kids, allowing the other to close the door and work in concentrated fashion. More or less. Both of them are starting early, working late when the kids are down for the count - and I have emails to prove it - and basically making it work. (And that includes toilet training the 2 1/2 year olds.) They're both pros and able to get their jobs done. But I'm sure happy for her sake that her employer isn't spying on her while she's juggling the juggle.

If she were working in the digital marketing group for the High Plains Journal, her company might be keeping a close eye on her.  At the High Plains Journal (and, no, you're not the only one who's thinking "High Plains Drifter"):

Employees were told to create a digital avatar and spend their workday in a virtual office, replete with chat room cubicles and a gossip-ready “water cooler.” They were also instructed to keep their home webcams and microphones on and at the ready, so a spontaneous face-to-face chat was always only a click away. (Source: WaPo)

Even though they can be spectacularly counter-productive, I'm all for "spontaneous face-to-face chat." Sure, it's a time-killer, but a human one and, as in real office life, if you don't have time to get interrupted, you can always say so. But to have your webcams and microphones on at all time? No thanks? And if I feel that way, imagine how someone who's got not one, but two, 2 1/2 year old maniacs barging in multiple times a day to announce "I gotta go poop!" feels about always on. Amusing the first time, no doubt, but that would get old fast. 

In the weeks since social distancing lockdowns abruptly scattered the American workforce, businesses across the country have scrambled to find ways to keep their employees in line, packing their social calendars and tracking their productivity to ensure they’re telling the truth about working from home.

Jeez, a manager should be able to tell if someone in their group is getting their work done without perpetually tracking their productivity. Especially these days, as we all adjust to the new abnormal. I'm sure I'm not the only person who's found herself craving an afternoon nap, even when I don't really "need" one. Or the urge to get out and get what little air you can get through a mask. Or get to the store during an hour when you know it won't be crowded. Jeez...

Thousands of companies now use monitoring software to record employees’ Web browsing and active work hours, dispatching the kinds of tools built for corporate offices into workers’ phones, computers and homes. But they have also sought to watch over the workers themselves, mandating always-on webcam rules, scheduling thrice-daily check-ins and inundating workers with not-so-optional company happy hours, game nights and lunchtime chats.

Companies, of course, are quick to say that they're doing this to keep morale up.

But some workers said all of this new corporate surveillance has further blurred the lines between their work and personal lives, amping up their stress and exhaustion at a time when few feel they have the standing to push back.

All this when whatever research there is suggests that the workers-from-home are, in fact, working longer hours, not shirking.

But spies gotta spy.

Several [employee monitoring] companies allow managers to regularly capture images of workers’ screens and list employees by who is actively working and their hours worked over the previous seven days.

One system, InterGuard, can be installed in a hidden way on workers’ computers and creates a minute-by-minute timeline of every app and website they view, categorizing each as “productive” or “unproductive” and ranking workers by their “productivity score.” The system alerts managers if workers do or say something suspicious: In a demo of the software shown to The Post, the words “job,” “client” and “file” were all flagged, just in case employees were looking elsewhere for work.

Advice to job-searching work from homers: USE YOUR PERSONAL DEVICE FOR THIS SORT OF ACTIVITY. And, no matter how desperate you are for work, do not under any circumstances take a position with InterGuard.

InterGuard’s system can also record all of the workers’ emails, instant messages and keystrokes, and takes pictures of workers’ screens as frequently as every five seconds, which managers can review as they please. “You could literally watch a movie of what that person did,” said Brad Miller, chief executive of the system’s Connecticut-based parent company, Awareness Technologies.

Glad I'm not working for the manager who wants to watch a movie of my workday. And, by the way, I doubt that most workers are always online. You might actually be reading something that's on - get this - paper. You might be - get this - thinking something through. Or doodling your way through a problem or organizing your thoughts by scribbling stuff down on - get this - a pad of lined yellow paper (notepad, regular, or legal-sized). Does all that get captured in the movie?

And how about all your nose-scratching and facerubbing, which, of course, we all know we're not supposed to be doing. (It's okay if you've just done your double Happy Birthday scrub-a-dub, isn't it?) Who wants that on full display.

Because there's screen capture, but there's also you capture, as all good Zoomers know.

Needless to say, business is going gangbusters for these employee monitoring companies. 

Here's a few things Brad Miller has to say about what his company does. It would be "financially irresponsible" NOT to do this. 

“It’s silly to say, ‘I just trust them all,’ and close my eyes and hope for the best,” he said. Some workers have grimaced at the surveillance, he added, but most should have nothing to hide: “If you’re uncomfortable with me confirming the obvious [about your work], what does that say about your motives?”

And what does it say about you, as a manager? What about your motives. Sorry, but this guy - whatever his motives - sounds like a complete and utter tool.

Sure, with half the workforce - what's left of it - working from home for the time being, there are going to be plenty of shirkers. I'm guessing that most of these gold-bricking shirkers are going to be the folks who were gold-bricking shirkers when they were in your physical workspace. Shame on you as a manager if you haven't done something about them.

In a time of such incredible anxiety - about our health, about the economy, about our work, about the future, about the world we now inhabit, about the environment, about our survival as a democracy - this is not the time to be adding spyware into the anxiety-producing mix.

Glad no one's spying on me.