Another company to avoid
The full-page ad on page86 of the June 2005 issue of PC World features a large headline screaming from a red background: “Record Everything Your Employees Do On The Internet.” The bottom features the heads of three employees. On their foreheads are these words:
“I pass company secrets via the web.”
“I surf porn websites from behind my cubicle walls.”
“I shop online after closing my office door.”
The ad is from SpectorSoft, maker of Spector CNE—Corporate Network Edition—yet another tool designed to kill any hope of employee engagement. Oops, sorry. It’s designed to (according to the ad) “provide an immediate and accurate record of every employee’s:
- Emails Sent & Received
- Chats/Instant Messages
- Keystrokes Typed
- Web Sites Visited
- Programs Launched
The company offers this appealing description of its product:
“At the touch of a button, you can monitor any employee, any time, anywhere on the network. Spector CNE secretly records and archive” all the activities listed above. “And unlike many filtering and blocking tools, Spector CNE records everything in exact visual detail. So, you have absolute proof that goes way beyond just knowing they visited porn.com”
Of course, like Websense and others engaged in engagement-killing (whoops, there I go again…I mean employee monitoring), SpectorSoft tries to terrify executives into plunking down big money to make Big Brother look like Santa Claus:
“A recent study concluded that employees spend an average of 73 minutes per day using office computers for non-business related activity (surfing porn, gambling, shopping or even searching for sex online). That translates into an annual loss of $6250 per employee or more than $300,000 per year down the drain for a company of just 50 employees.”
Is SpectorSoft evil? Well, yeah. They’re profiting by creating unfounded fear and introducing products into the workplace that will suck the company dry of employee commitment. But it’s the executives who succumb to the fear who represent the real problem. Would you work for a company whose leaders—yeah, the same ones who recruited you—held so low an opinion of you?
Of course, SpectorSoft, Websense and their ilk have a profit motive for creating and perpetuating this fear. Who has a motive for promoting the contrarian point of view? My rants go only so far. Even when I was interviewed by a business magazine, the article scoffed at my position as representing a lone voice, and a bit of a wacky one at that.
So let’s repeat the litany:
- There is no productivity drain in America; the Department of Labor continues to report increasing worker productivity.
- Workers who spend 73 minutes surfing for non-work purposes put in equal or more additional time doing work—often at home. Work done at home isn’t even counted by the DOL in its productivity numbers. If it were, its calcuations individual worker productivity would be even higher.
- Companies need to look to work-life integration. If workers are expected to put in 12-hour days and take work home, then companies need to allow employees to live part of their lives at work.
- Most employees wouldn’t risk their careers to surf the web. They want promotions and raises and recognition. They’re proud of what they do.
- Trust is a key element of engagement, which most CEOs claim is important to them. Send the message that you don’t trust employees and you destroy any hope of promoting a highly-engaged workforce. Monitor employees and get used to single-digit, zero, or negative growth.
- For employees who genuinely do abuse the privilege, supervisors should be trained to identify the abuse and the perpetrators dealt with on a case-by-case basis. Manage by exception. Don’t start from the position that the organization trusts none of its employees.
Of course, if you read my blog regularly, you already know all these points. The question is, how do we get this message into the heads of executives who are bombarded with the kind of pathetic, fear-mongering crap that companies like SpectorSoft and Websense shove down their throats? I certainly don’t have their advertising budgets. I’m open to ideas.
05/16/05 | 6 Comments | Another company to avoid