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A new Unisys Security Index™ study has found that Australians may have allowed the office into their home when COVID-19 pandemic hit, but they draw the line at employers using monitoring technology when working from home.
The findings signal a need for new, outcome-based approaches to performance management and open conversations about privacy, acceptable purpose, trust and permission, a Unisys expert has advised.
When asked if they would be comfortable if their employer allowed them to work from home but required a certain level of monitoring, the vast majority of Aussies do not support monitoring measures regardless of whether they are for productivity, security or support purposes.
Overall, female Australians and self-employed, small-to-medium business owners are the least comfortable with monitoring measures.
The 2021 Unisys Security Index for Australia has found the top four security concerns are data or privacy related including: ID theft (59 per cent of Australians are concerned about this issue), hacking and viruses (57 per cent), bank card fraud (55 per cent) and online shopping (49 per cent). Whereas natural disasters, including pandemics, had been the top concern in 2020.
Privacy is a top concern and people are protective of their home space according to Leon Sayers, director of advisory at Unisys in Asia-Pacific, because being mandated to work from home is not the same as volunteering for it.
"Employers must gain trust and permission to introduce monitoring technologies into that space."
"A two-way discussion is critical to successful organisational change management. And just because the technology allows you to do something doesn’t mean it is always appropriate.”
"While for many people, working from home offers benefits of less commuting time and more work-life balance, for others it is an imposition necessitated by the COVID response."
Sayers notes that is time to rethink how managers monitor performance and productivity.
“First you need to look at the type of role. What is more critical – the input (time spent on a task) or the output (the deliverable).
"For example, using technology to monitor how quickly call centre staff working from home answer a call and resolve a customer’s problem is a key metric of the role and service delivered to the customer."
Whereas for other "knowledge" jobs, it would be more relevant to measure if they delivered something of the agreed quality by the required deadline – you don’t need to know when they logged in or how long it took them,” Sayers added.
Not all monitoring is ‘Big Brother’
The Unisys Security Index data shows that people aged 18-24 years are the least comfortable with having their log in or log out times monitored (27 per cent comfortable compared to 35 per cent and higher for older age groups). However, younger people are more comfortable with proactive monitoring of software response times than older people, perhaps signalling the way the future digital workforce expects to be able to access the IT tools they need to do their job.
Some monitoring measures offer positive benefits to employees – such as monitoring software response time so that the IT team can proactively fix impending issues before they impact the employee – called "intelligent IT support" or using facial recognition technology to quickly confirm that it is the employee facing the laptop, without needing to re-enter the password.
“But adding new function and purpose to an existing tool requires a fresh conversation: we accepted webcams at home to aid collaboration – not security," Sayers explained.
"Employers need to lead open discussions about the intended purpose and benefit of such measures if they are to be accepted in the home workplace."
"The willingness to use a technology is critical to the successful roll out of any digital transformation,” Sayers concluded.
[Related: US State Department unveils plans for Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy]
Nastasha is a Journalist at Momentum Media, she reports extensively across veterans affairs, cyber security and geopolitics in the Indo-Pacific. She is a co-author of a book titled The Stories Women Journalists Tell, published by Penguin Random House. Previously, she was a Content Producer at Verizon Media, a Digital Producer for Yahoo! and Channel 7, a Digital Journalist at Sky News Australia, as well as a Website Manager and Digital Producer at SBS Australia. Nastasha started her career in media as a Video Producer and Digital News Presenter at News Corp Australia.
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