1/4 of Tech Employees Want Employers to Stop Spying on Them

More companies than ever are monitoring their employees, but what impact does this actually have on employee morale and productivity? According to Lewis Maltby, president and founder of the National Workrights Institute, going to such great lengths to monitor employees might actually be having an adverse effect.

The use of electronic monitoring is on the rise in America’s workplace. The number of companies that use some form of electronic monitoring has risen to 67.3% of employers…Electronic monitoring is likely to increase worker stress and decrease employee job satisfaction.

In 2009, Maltby released a book titled “Can They Do That?: Retaking Our Fundamental Rights in the Workplace.” In his book, Maltby details how few rights employees actually have and how far some companies go to monitor their employees. Just a couple examples include tracking employees through cell phone GPS locators, watching employees with hidden cameras, reading all company emails, monitoring browsing history, and even monitoring personal social media.

We decided to ask our users how they feel about the level of employee monitoring at their company. We asked users to answer “True” or “False” to this statement: “My company goes to unreasonable lengths to monitor employees.”

More than 6,700 users of Blind responded with 26 percent answering with “True.” We then broke down the results by companies with at least 50 employee responses. A couple things stood out. First, less than five percent of employees at Spotify feel that their company crosses the line when monitoring employees. This was the lowest of any tech company. Other companies on the low end include Google, Nvidia, Airbnb, Adobe and LinkedIn.

At the other end of the spectrum is Booking.com, with more than 54 percent of employees responding with “True,” which is more than twice the overall survey average.

More spying-related discussions on Blind

So, how do you feel about this? Tweet us and let us know @Teamblindapp.