Remote employee monitoring tech is surging - Emerging Tech Brew

Workforce analytics, productivity tracking, worker monitoring software: Whatever you privation to telephone it, idiosyncratic surveillance tech is trending way, mode up.

Pre-pandemic, conscionable 3 successful 10 companies with 1,000+ workers utilized tech to measurement worker productivity, but by the extremity of 2021, six successful 10 reported doing so, according to a Gartner survey reported by HR Brew. And arsenic of August 2022, eight of the 10 largest backstage US employers utilized these technologies, according to a NYT examination.

And that maturation is reflected successful funding, too: Despite wide VC backing being down by arsenic overmuch arsenic 53% twelvemonth implicit year arsenic of Q3 by immoderate estimates, backing for distant employee-monitoring tech is surging.

VCs invested a full of $180.5 cardinal successful the abstraction successful 2020, and successful 2021, VCs invested much than $243 million, according to PitchBook information pulled for Emerging Tech Brew. In the archetypal 3 quarters of 2022, the sector’s full VC concern has surpassed $394 million—62% much than 2021’s full-year total, adjacent though the twelvemonth is not yet over.

The sector’s maturation successful usage and backing comes alongside the emergence of afloat oregon semi-remote work, which could marque employers much tense astir workforce productivity. It besides comes contempt misgivings from immoderate privateness experts and from workers themselves.

“Employers spot this arsenic a treasure trove, like… ‘There are truthful galore technologies present for maine to seizure each of this information astir my workers, and it’s going to assistance maine marque amended decisions, summation productivity, [and] person that perfect worker,” Jessica Vitak, an subordinate prof astatine the University of Maryland’s College of Information Studies, said. “It’s truthful overmuch much analyzable than that.” 

Productivity problems

ActivTrak, a workforce analytics bundle institution with much than $77 cardinal successful funding, precocious ranked connected Deloitte Technology’s database of fastest-growing companies successful North America for the 3rd consecutive year. The institution has achieved “485% maturation implicit the past 3 years,” according to a property release.

Prodoscore, different productivity monitoring company, has had 300% YoY gross maturation for the past 3 years, CEO Sam Naficy told us—and the aforesaid maturation complaint for the fig of employees connected the platform, which is presently astatine astir 20,000.

The institution uses instrumentality learning and earthy connection processing to connection clients “visibility into worker productivity successful the signifier of 1 elemental score,” according to its Google Workspace listing.

The tech’s popularity is present coinciding with a play of layoffs and recession fears, during which companies—in particular, tech companies and startups—have announced a propulsion to absorption connected productivity and “doing much with less.”

“We person seen benignant of unbelievable maturation twelvemonth implicit twelvemonth for the past 3 years…and particularly the past six to 12 months,” Naficy said. “I’m not definite if it’s straight due to the fact that of layoffs and/or recession fears or, I think, conscionable the adoption of productivity tools becoming much and much accepted and, frankly, ubiquitous arsenic portion of the firm tech stack.”

In a probe insubstantial shared with Emerging Tech Brew, which is presently nether reappraisal astatine an world journal, Vitak and her co-authors showed 645 US workers who worked from location during aboriginal 2020 examples of workplace monitoring tech. Participants tended to person concerns astir information postulation utilized to assistance successful making promotion decisions oregon to way monthly show metrics. They besides “strongly disapproved” of reasons for collecting information that went “beyond expected goals” similar productivity oregon accusation information (e.g., steadfast behaviour monitoring).

And successful May, a abstracted survey by Morning Consult recovered that more than fractional of tech workers would resign if their leader utilized audio oregon video machine surveillance oregon productivity-monitoring facial designation software. Just nether fractional said they’d resign implicit the usage of keystroke monitoring tech oregon tech that takes screenshots of their machine screens. And much than fractional of respondents said they would diminution a caller occupation astatine a institution that uses productivity monitoring tech.

Employers’ perceived benefits of the tech see much entree to information and, successful theory, the quality to marque amended decisions astir workers, Vitak said. But, she added, the societal risks see longer-term information aggregation that could beryllium utilized for purposes beyond the archetypal intent, arsenic good arsenic the imaginable improvement of predictive algorithms focused connected what it means to beryllium productive.

“What makes idiosyncratic a ‘good worker’ cannot…be boiled down to a mathematical equation,” Vitak said. “The interest is astir putting truthful overmuch religion successful the data—and not recognizing what the information can’t archer us, and not recognizing the mode successful which the information tin misportray people.”