[...] In instituting these four forms of privacy—privacy within team boundaries, privacy limits on employee data, privacy in decision-making, and privacy about time—the organizations Bernstein studied refused the temptation to observe (or try to observe) everything. That refusal did not cost them profits or effectiveness. Instead, respect for privacy enhanced their success.
[...] That suggests that privacy's defenders should not concede that total surveillance is safest (or most efficient or most profitable), before going on to say that it would be creepy to have to fly naked. That's important in a society where monitoring technology is ever cheaper and ever more powerful, and the notion is spreading that surveillance, and the data it generates, can solve any problem. Privacy, so often depicted as the enemy of efficiency in public life, can be its friend.
[Discussion]: Privacy Makes Workers More Productive
[Source]: Want People to Behave Better? Give Them More Privacy
[Related]: Duet Ex Machina
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Saturday October 22 2016, @12:45PM
This article blurs micromanaging, insecurity, and other problems with privacy. Good bosses delegate. Bosses do not have time to do all the work themselves even if they know all about it and can do it better personally. Monitoring employees' every move is not much less work than just doing it themselves. Privacy is merely a consequence of not micromanaging and not monitoring.
If bosses have time to monitor and micromanage, it's an organizational problem, perhaps too many managers, or too many layers of management. They could delegate the work of monitoring employees to HR or some other department, but that doesn't change the fact that it's still a lot of work and expense. Or worse, it's a dysfunctional workplace in which management goals are not mostly aligned with the overall social good but are instead a combination of political statement and theater with indulgence in power tripping. Some people get a real kick out of abusing subordinates. All the worse if the managers have huge inferiority complexes directed at their subordinates who are smarter and better educated than themselves. Nepotism is one way people who have no business leading others end up in leadership positions.
Who is going to have the best experience and info to make small decisions about work? If it is not the bottom rung people who are most immersed in the work, then why are they there? This basically goes to the problem of why organize at all, why have teams of people doing work, rather than individuals? We have seen, over and over, that teamwork does work. Can't fake teamwork by assembling a team and then letting one person rise to dictator and turn all the rest of the members into puppets who can't do a thing when the dictator is busy with other matters and hasn't time to grant the permissions that individual forced all the others to wait on.
What do they teach in management school anyway?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 22 2016, @01:20PM
> This article blurs micromanaging, insecurity, and other problems with privacy.
No it doesn't. Not even close. That blurring is completely in your mind. The article is strictly about how employees put energy into acting the part when they feel like they are being observed and avoid doing things that increase productivity but are not part of their formal duties for fear of punishment.
This is a story about slack - the world can't run without slack, slack keeps the gears of society lubricated and surveillance drains the slack out of the system.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday October 22 2016, @04:26PM
Some people cannot concentrate with distractions.
I don't know what kind of idiot started that "open room no cubicles" fad, but I'd love to choke the living shit out of them. Fortunately, organizations who stupidly embraced that fad are starting to realize what a bad idea it is. Of course, anybody with half a brain knew from the get-go what a bad idea that was, but managers who make those decisions are mean-spirited dickheads who are always trying to find news ways to squeeze more pennies out of employees -- notably ZuckerJew, whose organization Facebook was one of the big proponents of the open-bay trend.
An open workspace works well for stock-traders, but not so well for anybody else.
It's not a matter of needing to hide so I can vape on the sly and knead my dick watching porn at work, it's a matter of being able to tune out distractions so I can get some fucking work done, and I can't get fucking work done with headphones on and a bag over my head.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Sunday October 23 2016, @06:02AM
My former bank went from traditional counters-and-tellers to this big open ring affair. Everyone hated it, and it somehow managed to be a lot slower, too. The problem seemed to be that it was both directionless for the customers (they soon resorted to having tellers go fetch the next customer from the line) and stressful for the tellers (who were now completely exposed, in a neighborhood with considerable crime) despite being rigged up so they had no access to cash.
So, yeah. Fucking dumb fads.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 23 2016, @04:53AM
Office wanking makes for happy workers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2giBAfDOGw [youtube.com]