After reading the text about snooping bosses I felt both scared and angry. Since I’m a person who thinks that integrity is very important this text really makes me upset.
One question that comes to my mind when I read this text is what it is that makes you as a boss feel that you have to use these kinds of methods to make sure that your staff is doing what they are supposed to do. I believe that the problem isn’t lying on the staff, more that it’s the boss that have problems feeling secure with that his or her staff is doing their job. That the boss does not feel that he or her have enough authority to send out the norms and values that you’re supposed to follow as a employee at a certain company. So instead of encourage the staff to keep up the good work, you're treating them wrong and distrusts them by spying on them with and without their knowing about it.
I think that this way to treat your staff can’t be good in any way at all. A person that feel trust and that gets responsibility from bosses and the company wants to do their job good more than a person that is feeling distrust. Distrusted persons that feel they have no expectations on themselves will do what they are supposed to do, nothing more, and nothing less. With this kind of staff your company will work good, but it will not develop like a company where the staff feels trusted and wants to be a part of the companies development by helping the company to grow better and bigger.
Today’s access to advanced technique is both good and bad in many ways. The fact that you with small resources can control and manage very big och complicated things is good if you’re using it with good intentions. But it’s also very easy to take advantage of the technique with bad intentions. The technical developers is doing a great job and giving us a lot of new techniques to facilitate our everyday life but they can't protect their inventions from being abused.
If I’ll ever be a boss I will trust my staff that they were doing their jobs while they are at work because I have to believe that. It’s my responsibility as a boss to employ staff that I can trust and to create an environment at my company where it’s not accepted to spending time at work to do personal things, like surfing the web, make non work related phone calls or sending private emails.
Well I get your point that if you are the boss, then it is your responsibility to encourage the staff and make them motivated to do their job. It would be great if the boss could do that on every work place, it would be the optimal atmosphere for the company. But, I do not think that is possible (even if it should be) to motivate every single one of the staff to do their job. Always somebody will phone in sick as in the text “snooping bosses” and they are not and planning to do something else or some peoplesurfing on the web during work.
SvaraRaderaI agree that surveillance at work may make the staff feel distrust. I still think that the boss should be allowed to use a program that could track their use of the computer (if it there is a point to do it), but no need to know every single detail what they are up to. If the boss using a program which track every detail, then inform the staff to not to private things at work they do not want him or her to know about.
I do also think that you do not want your boss to track you with GPS when you are working, because then would your boss notice that you take to many breaks when you driving between the stores ;-)
I do not really get the feeling that your privacy is being invaded when you are at work. As long as you are certain that you are doing your job right then what is the harm in your boss double checking? Maybe I am a bit pessimistic because of my personal experiences when it comes to working. In my experience most people want to earn as much money as possible with as little effort as possible. Therefore I believe that if people know that they never will be monitored they probably will stray from what they are supposed to do a lot more often then if they know that there is a risk of being supervised.
SvaraRadera/Jessica