What do you want to know
- As more employees work from home, employers have expressed concerns about productivity.
- Some organizations use tools like keyloggers and mouse trackers for employee monitoring.
- Microsoft Vice President Jared Spataro has made it clear that Microsoft views the use of these tools as “incorrect”.
As hybrid and remote working becomes the norm, employees and employers are often at odds, according to a recent Bloomberg report. The outlet pointed out that around 85% of managers are concerned about the amount of work being done by their employees. On the other hand, 87% of workers believe that their performance is acceptable.
These figures come from a survey carried out by Microsoft, which was discussed during an interview with Bloomberg Television. Microsoft surveyed 20,000 people in 11 countries for its latest data set.
“Executives think their employees are unproductive, while employees think they are productive and in many cases even feel burnt out,” said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. “One of the most important things for us in this new world of work and hybrid work is to bridge this paradox.”
With managers and superiors concerned about productivity, some organizations resort to tracking employees with tools such as keyloggers or mouse trackers. These are considered by many to be a breach of privacy and may not be as effective as they first appear, according to Microsoft Vice President Jared Spataro:
“There’s a growing debate about employee surveillance, and we take a very strong stance — we just think it’s wrong,” Spataro said. “We don’t think employers should monitor and take note of keystroke and mouse click activity and that kind of thing because in many ways we feel like it’s measuring the heat rather than the results.”
The pandemic has forced many organizations to work in a hybrid or remote way. Employers have struggled to bring employees back to physical offices, especially in cases where productivity and profits were unaffected by remote working. This change, combined with other factors, has triggered a major shift in the workforce.
As LinkedIn’s Ryan Roslansky pointed out, 2% of jobs on LinkedIn were listed as remote before the pandemic. This figure reached 20% in March 2022 and has since fallen to 15%.