Office workers throughout Swindon are being warned today that your employer may be watching your every move and listening to everything you say.
Employee privacy has become a controversial issue for Human Resources departments as employers have more technologies available to monitor telephones and computer systems.
This monitoring seems to have gone a step further with some companies installing sensors hidden in the office which can log the times you leave your desk.
These sensors could be anywhere in the lights, under your desk or even in your badge.
Bloomberg reports that ‘companies who use such devices claim the goal is less about allowing employers to snoop on workers and more about efficiency and practicality’.
Cad-Capture the Blackburn manufacturer of one of the motion sensors, OccupEye, hit the headlines last January after journalists at the Daily Telegraph in London discovered that managers had installed monitoring devices under their desks quickly removing them following a staff backlash.
Office-design company Gensler has installed 1,000 sensors in its new space in New York.
Embedded in light fixtures, the ten pence-size devices detect motion, daylight, and energy usage whilst a back-end system adjusts lighting levels.
The sensors also learn about employees’ behavior patterns. If workers start the day at 10 a.m., lights will stay dim until about that hour.
So far, Gensler has seen a 25 percent savings in energy costs.
How long until they hit the offices of Zurich or Nationwide?
