These were the craziest workplace surveillance stories of 2017

These were the craziest workplace surveillance stories of 2017These were the craziest workplace surveillance stories of 2017New advances in technology are making it easier than ever for ur employers to track our movements, whereabouts, and employability. Through information that we knowingly or unwittingly provide about ourselves, employers can make small and big decisions about our careers.Is this creepy and invasive? Depends on who you ask. While these surveillance tools can make our jobs more convenient, they can come at a high cost to our privacy, creating Orwellian nightmares.As we reflect on the future of work, heres a list of last years wildest workplace surveillance stories that should make us worry about whats to come.Brace yourselves1) Employees willingly getting microchipped for convenienceWould you get microchipped so that you could eat chips faster from a vending machine? A majority of employees at Three Square Market, a Wisconsin tech company, agreed to do this in July, a reported first for the United States.With a microchip implanted in their hands,these cyborgs can now enter the building, log onto their computers, and get chips from the vending machine with the wave of a hand. While this makes their jobs more convenient, it makes it much easier for their employers to track them. Although the CEO of Three Square Market says that the data is encrypted and secure, thats a lot of health and productivity information youre entrusting to your employer.2) Employers using big data to predict which employees will get sickSome companies including retailer Wal-Mart are using outside firms to look up how you shop, what you eat, and what prescription drugs you buy to algorithmically predict which employees are fruchtwein likely to get a health condition, according to a February investigation by the Wall Street Journal.Heres an example of how one wellness firm can collect information from your insurer and other companies to figure out youre pregnant before you re ready to know youre pregnant To determine which employees might soon get pregnant, Castlight recently launched a new product that scans insurance claims to find women who have stopped filling birth-control prescriptions, as well aswomen who have made fertility-related searches on Castlights health app, the Journal reported.Yes, you can opt out of the prenatal care you might start receiving if the algorithm guesses incorrectly, but you canelend opt out of the Big Brother feeling that someone is watching you.(Clarification 1/11/18 Castlight SVP Kristin Anne Torres Mowat clarifies that the data Castlight provides is anonymized of identifying characteristics and aggregated, so that an employer will not see which individuals might be pregnant.)3) Companies reportedly preventing older job seekers from seeing job listingsCompanies may be making decisions about your employability before you know a job exists.A recent investigation by ProPublica andThe New York Timesfound that dozens of t he nations top employers - includingAmazon, Verizon, Goldman Sachs, UPS, and Facebook - are using Facebook, Google, and LinkedIn to create recruitment ads that target only younger job seekers. The report outlines how older job seekers would not see job listings even if they wanted to apply to them through this age-based ad targeting.Is the targeting of one group the illegal exclusion of another? The law is unclear on when targeting younger job seekers becomes age discrimination. While some companies backed down after being alerted to the targeted ads, others defended the practice. Facebook said its age-based ad targeting is an accepted industry practice.4) A productivity tool that takes pictures of employees every 10 minutes to make sure they are workingHow can employers tell if their remote workers are slacking off or not? Talent management company Crossover has built a productivity tool, WorkSmart, that is seen as one solution. Through frequent screenshots of workstations and num bers on workers app use and keystrokes, WorkSmart can give employers a focus score and an intensity score to judge their employees.While this may make some of us extremely self-conscious, Crossover thinks youll get over it and see it as betterment.The response is OK, Im being monitored, but if the company is paying for my time how does it matter if its recording what Im doing? Its only for my betterment, Crossovers Sanjeev Patni told the Guardian about how employees adjust to being monitored.5) More of us are using schmelzglas to track each other at workHow many of your coworkers and competitors are tracking your emails? The answer is more and more each day. A 2017 Wired investigationinto email trackers found that more of us are using trackers to know exactly when, where, and how often we are reading each others emails.According to email intelligence company OMC, one in five conversational emails are now being tracked.We have been in touch with users that were tracked by their spou ses, business partners, competitors, Florian Seroussi, the founder of OMC told Wired. Its the wild, wild west out there.What are the ethics of only one party knowing they are being tracked by email? The dangers within laypersons and employees using trackers have yet to be fully explored.The bottom lineThis list is only a jump-off point for all the tomorrows that are happening and have not yet happened in the workplace. As technology continues to advances, the one prediction that Im certain of is that we will continue to be amazed at how far businesses will go to track job seekers and employees.