Bosses and 'mangle-ment'
Forcepoint even mentions "internal activists" and those who had a "huge fight with the boss" as risks.
OK, so there are ample posts on the Register regarding idiotic bosses, but 'having a huge fight with the boss' might, just might be related to 'the boss' being 'wrong'. (hard to imagine or believe, but it has happened, Herodotus has a few gruesome examples in his Histories). I'd say, that if you have a huge fight with your boss, then the boss is inadequate - at least in person management as the boss should be calm, reduce tension and sort things out, not engage in 'huge fights'.
The more subtle implication from the quote is that the 'workers' are monitored but the bosses are not. I bet that none of the board of directors would be covered by this level of surveillance and judgement. I recall one presentation by an American colleague about a product called 'Red Owl'. This purported to use all information about staff, their emails, HR records, communications on instant messaging productivity etc. to identify risky employees. I did point out that this was totally illegal under the UK's then (pre-Brexit) data protection legislation, so it was shelved.
I also find the aggressive nature of the expected response to surveillance, that 'these people are security risks' problematic. Now I may be jumping to an unjustified assumption here, but where is the duty of care an employer has towards their employees in helping them? I do not know of any company that actually trains their lower level (or any level) managers to manage people with mental health issues, such as even mild depression. Yes, there are ways of managing people with Asperger's, Autism, blindness, deafness, wheelchair users, and probably Tourette's, and there are, at least in the UK, laws about not discriminating against people because of race, sex, sexuality, political affiliation etc. But this seems to be very much a 'Them and Us' sort of technology. But managing someone with PTSD or depression - no idea.
And productivity is not always measured in amount, far better to measure quality. One famous author (I forget his name, but you would know it if I could remember it) did a journalism course. The assignment was to write 1000 words on a specific topic. His response was 500 words, but he passed because the marker had to admit that 'every word is a gem'.
Just glad that I retired a few years ago.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
