by MELISSA STANGER
Employees could be monitored, and not just at work.
The PwC report also envisions a world in which employers can monitor and screen their employees at a much more advanced level: “Sensors check their location, performance and health,” the report states. “The monitoring may even stretch into their private lives in an extension of today’s drug tests.”
The Daily Telegraph learned such measures will likely be met with resistance. The British newspaper installed motion detectors in early January to track their reporters but quickly abandoned them after incurring angry blowback.
“Will companies develop a kind of ‘Big Brother’ approach to checking on their employees? Possibly, but I think more of them will think they need to be engaged in supporting [their employees],” Price said.
He pointed out how many Silicon Valley tech executives are setting up schools for their kids and their employees’ kids in order to provide a better, more tech-focused brand of education.
“These paternalistic philanthropists who want to give their workers housing, keep them out of the pubs, [and] look after their health” may seem intruding or controlling, Price said, but “it will be in companies’ best economic interest … to play a much more active role in that.”
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