A May 2021 study conducted by ExpressVPN has revealed the extent of remote employee monitoring in the United States.

In collaboration with Pollfish, the privacy and security company surveyed 2,000 remote and hybrid workers in the US, and 2,000 US employers with a remote and/or hybrid workforce. All of the companies involved had a minimum of 10 staff members and worked in various sectors.

Among the company’s key findings is a mismatch between how the majority of employers feel about monitoring software and yet still continue to use it. Eighty-three percent of the bosses surveyed said that they had ethical concerns around the use of employee surveillance. As one employer put it:

“I think it comes from a place of paranoia and need for control amongst employers and has a negative effect on staff morale.”

Despite several sentiments such as the above, and the ethical implications of surveilling staff members, 78 percent of the bosses who participated in the survey said they currently used monitoring software.

ExpressVPN’s key findings

●     One-third of the employees who participated do not think their employers are monitoring their work and/or work habits, and 15 percent did not know that remote monitoring was even possible.

●     More than half of the employee respondents (56 percent) said they felt stress and anxiety about having their communications surveilled while at work.

●     Forty-one percent of these employees said the stress and anxiety were down to “constantly wondering if they are being watched.”

●     Nearly half of all employees (48 percent) would be willing to accept a decreased salary in exchange for no surveillance. No less than a quarter of these employees would accept a 25 percent pay cut, a hefty price to pay for privacy.

●     Thirty-seven percent of the employers said that they had stored recordings of phone conversations saved for evidence to be used to fire staff members.

●     Seventy-three percent of employers also admitted that they use saved communications (emails, calls, messages, or videos) to review when creating performance reviews. A further 46 percent said they used store communications to monitor staff for the formation of unions.

How employers feel about remote work options

The pandemic may have precipitated the sharp rise in remote and hybrid work models, but as restrictions have eased, it’s employees who are keeping remote work on the agenda. In a bid to fight what many HR professionals call a rising tide of attrition, employers are vowing to retain these flexible role options.

However, giving employees the freedom to work from home is making some bosses uneasy. According to ExpressVPN’s data, 74 percent of employers said they feel a lack of control, 69 percent said they feel uneasy because they can’t directly observe employees, and 59 percent don’t trust their employees to work without digital supervision.

Trust is crucial to the employee-staff member relationship; as the survey’s employee participants noted, surveillance felt like a violation of this trust and was a cause of stress. It seems in a bid to ensure business objectives are being met, the companies surveilling employees may be causing additional issues.