British employers are using more and ore electronic systems to keep a watch over their employees, and hus making the workers feel more exhausted and anxious, ccording to a survey.
London, January 9 : British employers are using more and ore electronic systems to keep a watch over their employees, and hus making the workers feel more exhausted and anxious, ccording to a survey.
More than half of the employees surveyed reported that their anagers used surveillance systems to keep track of how hard they ere working.
Managers in a fifth of workplaces also admitted during the urvey, conducted for the Economic and Social Research Council, hat they monitored their employees using computer-based systems.
"Computers and IT systems are bringing surveillance to most orkplaces. Now for the first time we can see how this evelopment is damaging employees' well-being," the Telegraph uoted Dr. Michael White, who co-directed the study with Dr. atrick McGovern of the London School of Economics, as saying.
Dr McGovern said that bosses usually evaluate the performances of heir employees on the basis of details of sales, deliveries, onversations with customers, phone calls and the time taken to omplete tasks, which are routinely logged on computer systems.
Though the surveillance was more in call centres where onversations with customers are recorded "for training urposes", Dr. McGovern says that the trend was rapidly expanding o other workplaces also.
During the survey, 2,132 employees and 2,000 employers across all ndustry sectors were questioned. It was found that work-related train rose by 7.5 per cent in workplaces checked by computer.
Among administrative and white-collar staff in offices like call entres, stress rose by 10 per cent if they were monitored onstantly.
People engaged in lower-ranking office jobs tended to suffer the orst effects of monitoring, showed the survey.
Dr McGovern said that many employees felt as if they had simply ecome "an appendage of a machine".
"People are having to register every piece of work they do. Where our work is routinely recorded electronically, then there's a ense that you are becoming an appendage of a machine," he said.
"The people who work under this sort of monitoring were more ikely to report work strains like feeling exhausted at the end f the day," he added.
The survey also revealed that many employers were checking their mployees Internet use so as to ensure that they were not wasting ime on social networking sites such as Facebook.
"Monitoring employees' behaviour through computer systems is a rowing concern across the workforce. Although employers can have egitimate concerns about staff accessing inappropriate material nd excessive time spent social networking, a heavy handed eaction causes unnecessary stress and weakens morale," Brendan arber, TUC general secretary, said.
"Employers should instead look to develop agreed guidelines and olicies on internet usage and ensure all staff are aware of hem," Barber added.
Dr McGovern said the research, covering changes in the British orkplace from 1984 to 2004, showed the trend in monitoring had pread very quickly, but he expected it to continue.
ANI