Workers Deserve the Right to Frown on the Job
Today’s bosses have unparalleled opportunities to monitor workers’ emotions — and punish those workers for expressing anything short of cheeriness.
Call it the right to frown. Technological advances are giving employers the ability to monitor workers more closely than a human manager ever could. (RichVintage / Getty Images)
For employers, the pandemic’s acceleration of remote work presents a dilemma: How can they keep an eye on their employees when they’re no longer physically present at the workplace? Remote work appears to have little if any effect on employee productivity, but that hasn’t stopped employers from angling for new methods for keeping workers under their thumb.
Fortunately for them, the market offers a host of solutions.
The employer might install software on work devices that monitors mouse usage to ensure workers are at their desks. But some half of large companies were already using such software in 2018, and workers have found ways to circumvent it. Mouse jigglers, for instance, artificially mimic mouse usage.
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