The Register: Bossware Booms as Bots Determine Whether You’re Doing a Good Job

The COVID-19 lockdown meant a surge in remote work, and the trend toward remote and hybrid workplaces has persisted long after the pandemic receded. That has changed the nature of workplace management as well. Bosses can’t check for butts in seats or look over their employees’ shoulders in the office to make sure they’re working instead of having a LAN party. So they’ve turned to software tools to fill the gap.

So-called “bossware” lets managers keep a close eye on employees’ activity, tracking everything from knowledge workers’ website visits to the gait and facial expressions of those involved in more physical activities.

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The substantial transfer of control from workers to employers and businesses, enabled by these tools, requires that we reinforce workers’ rights and expand collective bargaining.

If deployed in the wrong way, bossware can also lead to employees working to meet the demands of the software, rather than doing what’s best for the business. According to a 2022 New York Times article, a group of social workers employed by UnitedHealthcare was labeled as idle when they were talking to patients, because they had long periods where they didn’t touch their laptop keyboards. These workers received ratings of 1 to 5 based on how much they typed. Another UnitedHealth employee said her manager told her to jiggle her mouse during meetings to make sure she appears active.

According to a report from the National Employment Law Project (NELP) [PDF], employees are often subject to unfair discipline based on meeting the standards set by electronic monitoring and, when problems occur with how the software measures productivity, they often have little recourse.

“Part of the strategy for some employers is to allow them to scale back on human managers, and then the result of that is sometimes an employee can’t get a hold of someone in order to resolve an issue,” Josh Boxerman, Government Affairs Manager at NELP, told The Register. “It doesn’t have the ability to think outside the box, doesn’t have the ability to understand situations that are not expected, and that can lead to unfair discipline and termination, leaving workers with little to no recourse.”

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NELP’s report also notes the negative impact of workplace monitoring on employees’ legally protected right to join unions. With the company watching messages, workers are much less likely to engage in labor organizing and more likely to face retaliation from bosses.

“We can imagine situations where an employee is judged by a software to be likely to try and organize their colleagues into a union, and then the employer takes that data and decides, well, the best thing for me to do is to terminate that employee,” Boxerman said.

Boxerman noted that, while it’s illegal for companies to fire employees for union activity, the management could hide their decision behind other metrics.

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Another way that workers can fight back against overly aggressive surveillance is via collective bargaining.

“The substantial transfer of control from workers to employers and businesses, enabled by these tools, requires that we reinforce workers’ rights and expand collective bargaining,” the NELP report recommends. “So that workers can stand up to employers and businesses about whether and to what extent they are surveilled and subjected to automated decision systems.”

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Read the full story at theregister.com.