周一，《每日電訊報》的記者們在上班時發現，公司安裝了個人傳感器，用于監視他們是否在崗。公司并未提前通知，也沒有就這項措施進行任何解釋。全體員工的抗議聲迫使公司在當天下班時將這些傳感器拆除。

二十多年來，監視員工舉動一直是工作場所的常態。如果你登錄計算機開始工作，認為自己沒有被跟蹤，那你可就大錯特錯了。本特利大學商業道德中心的一份調查發現，92%的美國公司設有道德行為官員，負責監控員工的電子郵件賬戶——這還是2002年的事情。

美國工作權利學會的里維斯?莫爾特比表示：“計算機監控可以追溯到20年前，而位置監控則是最近才出現的。”

據Buzzfeed報道，《每日電訊報》告訴員工，安裝傳感器的目的是收集“環境可持續性數據”。這確實是英國數據管理公司Cad-Capture推銷監控設備時所宣傳的用途之一。

Cad-Capture是一家利用數據幫助客戶尋找辦公空間的房地產咨詢公司。在經濟陷入衰退之后，一些公共部門客戶希望降低房地產方面的支出，以應對政府的緊縮措施。于是，Cad-Capture就開發了一款名為OccupEye的監控設備。

Cad-Capture公司高級客戶經理尼爾?斯蒂爾表示：“他們希望我們公司進行房地產使用率研究，以確定他們對物業的利用是否有效。”每個工作空間可以花費大約150美元購買一臺OccupEye，也可以租用，每月租金約為22美元，這款設備利用熱傳感器和運動傳感器確定一個空間是否有人使用。

斯蒂爾表示，自2012年上市以來，OccupEye的銷量便開始“呈指數級”增長。2015年，該設備占到Cad-Capture公司業務的50%。

On Monday, journalists at The Daily Telegraph were welcomed to work by individual sensors that monitored when they were at their desks. The sensors appeared with no notice or explanation and prompted such an outcry from the Telegraph’s staff that the company decided to remove them by the day’s end.

For more than two decades, employee monitoring has been a given in the workplace. If you log into a computer to do your job and think you’re not being tracked, you’re wrong. A survey by the Bentley College Center For Business Ethics found that 92% of American businesses with ethics officers monitor their employees’ email accounts—and that was in 2002.

“Computer monitoring goes back 20 years,” says Lewis Maltby of the National Workrights Institute, “but location monitoring is much more recent.”

The Telegraph told employees that the sensors were installed to collect “environmental sustainability data,” according to Buzzfeed. And that is indeed one of the purposes for which Cad-Capture, a United Kingdom-based data management company, markets its OccupEye monitoring devices.

Cad-Capture is a real estate consultancy that uses data to help clients find office space. Its OccupEye device was developed in the wake of the recession, when Cad-Capture’s public sector clients wanted to reduce their real estate expenses in response to austerity measures.

“They had an interest in having companies like ours conduct real estate utilization studies to determine if they were occupying their property efficiently,” says Neil Steele, a senior account manager at Cad-Capture. The OccupEye device, which costs about $150 per workspace to buy or approximately $22 per month to rent, uses heat and motion sensors to determine if a space is occupied.

Since OccupEye launched in 2012, sales of the devices have grown “exponentially,” Steele says. In 2015, they made up 50% of Cad-Capture’s business.

斯蒂爾表示，目前有數萬臺OccupEye設備為全世界數百家客戶服務。這款設備可以向管理者實時反饋工作場所的使用情況，在采用“辦公桌輪用制”的公司特別受歡迎。所謂辦公桌輪用制是一種工作空間共享的作法，員工沒有固定的工位，而是登記可用的辦公桌。OccupEye系統可以為雇主和員工提供所有座位的地圖，并用顏色代碼標注無人使用的座位。大學也在利用這項技術，告知學生們可用的學習空間。

在被問及是否有客戶有意利用這款設備調查員工的行蹤或工作效率時，斯蒂爾回答說：“沒有這樣的客戶。”他說道：“這是一款空間監測設備，它不是用來監控人的。”

但莫爾特比卻對各公司使用這款設備的意圖表示懷疑。他表示：“一項用于提高效率的工作技術最終淪為紀律整肅工具的例子不勝枚舉，這不會是第一個。”他問道：“如果員工移動圖表明，一名員工離開崗位的次數超過另外一名員工，公司會怎么做？”管理者會視而不見嗎？莫爾特比表示：“有些情況下，公司或許不會理會，但并不盡然。”

雖然《每日電訊報》事件招致眾怒，但OccupEye的侵略性其實遠低于一些在售的跟蹤設備。這款設備僅監控員工是否在工位上。有些監視設備則會對員工進行全天候監控。對于莫爾特比等職場權利倡議者來說，這些設備更值得擔憂。例如，莫爾特比表示，越來越多的醫院利用無線射頻設備實時跟蹤員工的位置，監視護士的移動情況。醫院宣稱，這些設備有助于改進護士的護理效率。但莫爾特比認為：“他們之所以需要跟蹤每位護士的一舉一動，首先是因為醫院沒有足夠的護士。”

雇主通過某些工具，利用工作手機跟蹤員工的作法，則更令人苦惱。對于雇主來說，跟蹤某些員工是有道理的，比如送貨司機，去見客戶的銷售人員等。技術調查公司阿伯丁集團2012年的一項研究顯示，在設有這類“現場員工”的公司當中，有62%使用GPS進行跟蹤，在2008年，這一比例僅有約30%。但不論工作日還是周末，不分白天黑夜地跟蹤員工的手機，勢必會引發一些問題。

這種全天候監視方式已經讓一些公司惹上官司。一些員工起訴稱，這種監控造成的隱私問題，“對于一個理智的人極具冒犯性。”

莫爾特比表示，目前尚沒有針對這類跟蹤的成文法，但法官可以根據普通法的隱私標準進行裁定。

在某些情況下，跟蹤員工位置確實可以提高效率。例如，美國銀行根據位置和語音跟蹤所收集的數據，增加了客服中心員工相互溝通的時間。

但莫爾特比認為，一般而言，“一些公司認為，知道員工何時離開工位對雇主有利，這種觀點其實并無直觀的明顯理由。”他表示，隨著移動技術的普及，“你并非只有在工位上才能工作。假如有一種神奇的設備可以確定一名員工什么時候在工作或者沒有工作，或許還值得為此花一大筆錢，可惜這樣的設備并不存在。”（財富中文網）

譯者：劉進龍/汪皓

審校：任文科

Steele says there are tens of thousands of OccupEye units in service at hundreds of clients worldwide. The devices, which provide administrators with a live feed of workplace occupancy, are especially popular among companies that employ “hot desking”—a workspace sharing practice in which employees don’t have a set workstation but log in at any desk that’s available. The OccupEye system can supply employers and their workers with a map of all seats and color code the ones that are free. Universities also use the technology to inform students of open study spaces.

When asked if a client had ever expressed interest in using the devices to survey individual employees’ whereabouts or productivity, Steele answered, “No, none at all.” He said, “It’s all about the space, not about individuals.”

Maltby is skeptical of companies’ intentions. “This wouldn’t be the first employment technology that was introduced for efficiency but became a disciplinary tool,” he says. “What’s going to happen when the traffic pattern shows that one employee is away more than another?” he asks. Is a manager just going to ignore that? “In some cases yes, in some cases no,” Maltby says.

For all the outrage the Telegraph incident prompted, the invasiveness of OccupEye pales in comparison to some of the tracking technology that’s out there. It only monitors whether employees are at their desks. Other types of monitors that follow employees for the entire workday are more concerning to workplace rights advocates like Maltby. For instance, Maltby says hospitals are increasingly using radio frequency identification badges, which constantly track an employee’s location, to monitor the movement of their nurses. Hospitals promote the badges as a way to ensure efficient patient care. But “the reason they need to track every nurse every second of every shift is that there aren’t enough nurses to begin with,” Maltby says.

More upsetting still are the tools employers use to track workers through their work cell phones. It makes sense for employers to track some employees, such as delivery drivers or sales staff who travel to clients. A 2012 study by Aberdeen Group, a technology research firm, reported that 62% of companies with such “field employees” tracked staff using GPS, up from about 30% in 2008. Problems arise, though, when employee cell phones are tracked at all hours, day or night, workday or weekend.

That kind of 24/7 surveillance has led to lawsuits by workers who claim that the privacy implications of such monitoring are “highly offensive to a reasonable person.”

Maltby says that there’s no statutory law against that kind of tracking, but judges could rule against it based on common law privacy standards.

In some instances, employee location tracking can be used to improve productivity. Bank of America, for instance, used the data it collected from location and voice monitors to increase the time its call center employees spent talking to one another.

But in general, Maltby says, “it’s not intuitively obvious why knowing every time an employee leaves [his or her] desk is of use to an employer.” Given the mobile technology available, “you don’t have to be be at your desk to work,” he says. “If there was some magic device that determined when an employee was working or not working, it’d be worth a lot of money, but such a device does not exist.”