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Shel Holtz
Communicating at the Intersection of Business and Technology
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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

Comments
  • 1.Great posting! Not only will those tools reduce productivity, they will also reduce innovation within the companies that deploy them.

    I have an idea (also posted on my blog) - how about we create a wiki with their customer references. I am sure nobody would want to work for any of the companies that deployed those tools.

    francois gossieaux | May 2005 | USA

  • 2.They should repackage and reorient their pitch.
    Instead of being in the "We protect you from your Evil Employees" space, they should advertise that they are in the "Life Balance" biz.

    They could install their software in corporate AND home environments. That way management could make sure no one spent anytime on anything but work while at work, and also that no one dare work while at home!

    Maybe we can force employees to excercise too in order to bring down health insurance costs?

    Ted Demopoulos | May 2005 | New Hampshire

  • 3.That's great, Ted! Of course, there's a company that made the news because the owner is firing employees who smoke, and his next target is overweight employees. Next will come employees who think dirty thoughts.

    Shel Holtz | May 2005 | Concord, CA

  • 4.I love the WIKI idea - or why not just form a collective of like-minded souls who publish a list of 'outed' companies on their websites.

    I'm happy to repurpose your comments, Shel, onto a page on my site, then underneath run a list of companies who engage in such shenanigans.

    Lee

    Lee | May 2005 | Adelaide, Australia

  • 5.Actually, I'm a fan of the wiki idea, Lee, which would allow anybody to add any company. But the more places we expose these companies, the better.

    Shel Holtz | May 2005 | West Hills, CA

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