Opinion |

In workers we trust — or do we?

This Labor Day weekend, I find myself thinking about work ethic — and what it really means in the aftermath of the pandemic.

We’ve long defined work ethic as a commitment: to your employer and job — and to working hard (and with pride) to deliver the best results possible, no matter the circumstances.

It’s a quaint notion that sounds out of touch at a time when employees are reassessing their relationship to work.

It began with the Great Resignation in early 2021. Unsettled by the pandemic, people considered their work — and workplaces — with fresh perspective. Some questioned whether they even liked their company culture, or if their job was as meaningful as they wanted it to be.

Now the Great Resignation has a companion, dubbed “quiet quitting.” Rather than going above and beyond in their jobs, quiet quitters log off their computers at the end of the workday, promptly. They decline additional tasks, especially if unpaid. It’s caught on as a self-care technique — an antidote to the workplace grind.

And on this Labor Day, like last, “help wanted” signs abound. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 11.2 million unfilled jobs at the end of July 2022 — nearly two jobs for every American seeking work.

Despite these markers, some employers haven’t gotten the memo. They still think about work ethic in old-fashioned terms: If you’re not glued to your desk or work station, you can’t be doing your job. So they’ve turned to electronic surveillance as a way to monitor employee efficiency and productivity.

I knew about the use of surveillance at Amazon, where it became a public relations nightmare. Among the company’s practices was their measurement of “time off task” — the amount of time warehouse workers weren’t directly performing their job duties. It led to the firing of some high performers and sparked a unionization effort. Amazon has retooled the system to look only into idle periods longer than 15 minutes.

But I was surprised a couple of weeks ago when I learned that eight of the 10 largest private employers in the U.S. are monitoring their employees, including Amazon.

The surveillance technology is creepy — especially if employees don’t know they’re being monitored (rules vary from state to state). In a blog post last year, Darrell West, vice president and director of governance studies at the Brookings Institution, described the many ways in which employees are being surveilled — everything from webcams that monitor worker attentiveness to geolocation software that tracks physical movements to tools that analyze the content of emails and social media messages.

The technology is also imperfect — better at tracking keystrokes than human interaction. A manager will often spend time in conversation with employees during their workday, yet some systems consider this away-from-computer time to be unproductive.

On the podcast “The Daily,” New York Times reporter Jodi Kanter recently talked about the surveillance phenomenon. She shared the story of Carol Kraemer, a finance executive whose employer only paid remote workers for the minutes when its tracking system detected active work. Offline work — like mentoring — didn’t register and required approval as “manual time.” If Kraemer forgot to turn on her time tracker, she had to appeal to be paid at all.

Saying the quiet part loud, it seems that companies are making a trade of sorts: If you’re not willing to come back into the office, we’re going to monitor your every move.

I’ll be the first to admit: I’m not a work-from-home fan. I miss the spontaneous conversations and impromptu check-ins with employees. And I think young (and new) employees lose out on vital connections and mentoring opportunities. It’s hard to learn a company’s culture on a Zoom screen.

But I understand the benefits of work from home, too. At the National Conflict Resolution Center, the pandemic years were our best ever, from a results perspective. Some of the reason for our success, I’m sure, is that employees felt trusted and empowered. Despite the many challenges of the pandemic, it seemed that all of us were rowing in the same direction.

So, while tracking may provide insights into work habits, it can’t supplant a trusting relationship between employers and employees. If trust is a quaint notion too, we can’t be far away from a robotized workforce.

It’s clear that employee surveillance isn’t going away. And with time, systems will get better. But companies have an obligation to disclose their practices and clarify their work-from-home expectations. We also need stronger protections of worker privacy.

Our workplaces have changed forever. The needs and priorities of our workers have changed, too. It’s time to adapt.

Dinkin is president of the National Conflict Resolution Center, a San Diego-based group working to create solutions to challenging issues, including intolerance and incivility. To learn about NCRC’s programming, visit ncrconline.com