Ducks in a Row: Institutional Jerks
by Miki Saxon
(‘Jerk’ is used here as an umbrella term for bullies, manipulators, bigots, rotten attitudes, rudeness, cruelty, etc.)
Jerks have been around since the dawn of man.
In today’s workplace you can find jerks at any level of an organization.
It’s always been difficult to call out the jerks, because they are usually bullies and good at intimidation.
The rise of individual jerks, some of them extremely powerful, has fostered the rise of institutional jerks, also very powerful.
Some are in tech and run for companies that are household names — Facebook, Google, Amazon — others aren’t as well-known, such as Palantir.
However, you can find them everywhere, in politics — national, regional and local. In religion — any of them. And any other arena you want to focus on.
Their power is more far-reaching and they believe they are untouchable.
Sadly, they often are.
But how much worse is it when the institution itself is the jerk?
Talk about untouchable.
WeWork is on a role to lead the newest crop of institutional jerks.
The company acquired and plans to monetize software that tracks employees throughout a company.
Euclid’s website says the company is “focused on redefining the workplace experience of the future.” Translation: optimizing every aspect of the physical workplace so workers are their most productive.
Euclid does this by tracking how people move around physical spaces. Its technology can track how many people showed up to a meeting or to that after-work happy hour. The company can see where employees tend to congregate and for how long. It’s all done over Wi-Fi.
Sound creepy?
It is.
Governments are getting into the act, too.
While the legislation varies slightly from state to state, it generally requires contractors to install software that allows “automatic verification” of their hours billed. Some bills, such as those being considered in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, are as exact as requiring a software solution that takes screenshots of “state-funded activity at least once every three (3) minutes” and store that data for seven years. The New Jersey and Pennsylvania proposals also require logging “keystroke and mouse event frequency.”
Now comes the question that the jerks never seem to think about.
How do you recruit talent, let alone top talent, into an environment that says up front, “we don’t trust you”?
As for the private sector, there is no way that any kind of monitoring or surveillance will remain secret — any more than salaries did.
Companies that choose not to go down that road will enjoy a more productive, creative and loyal workforce, not to mention one heck of a recruiting edge.
Image credit: Steve Baker
