Modern workplace tech linked to lower employee well-being, study finds

[midian182]

A hot potato: Companies love modern workplace technologies such as trackers, cameras, AI, ML, automation, and robotics. They might improve efficiency, increase output, and boost bottom lines, but what effect do they have on the employees who must work alongside them? According to a new study, contemporary tech often has a negative impact on workers' quality of life.

Thinktank The Institute for the Future of Work surveyed more than 6,000 people to discover how four categories of workplace technologies affected their wellbeing.

The study found that increased exposure to three of the categories tended to worsen workers' mental state and health.

The three areas that negatively impact people most are wearable and remote sensing technologies, which covers CCTV cameras and wearable trackers; robotics, consisting of automated machines, self-driving vehicles, and other equipment; and, unsurprisingly, technologies relating to AI and ML, which includes everything from decision management to biometrics.

Only one of the categories was found to be beneficial to employees, and it's one that has been around for decades: ICT tech such as laptops, tablets, phones, and real-time messaging tools.

Companies are in love with generative AI right now, boasting about how it streamlines work and reduces costs. Many claim it will merely augment jobs and not replace them, yet we're seeing a record number of layoffs within the tech industry. In some cases, generative AI is cited as one of the reasons – or the only reason – for the layoffs. A report from last July found that fears over AI and job losses are driving some tech execs to drink and drugs.

It's not just those working in front of computer worried about their livelihoods. Mechanical automation is advancing at a rapid pace. BMW said at the start of the year that it will add humanoid robots to its manufacturing plants, Samsung said it is planning human-fee, fully automated fabs within six years, and Amazon, which has been criticized for its use of trackers and cameras to monitor workers, already has human-like robots working alongside a myriad of other bots in some of its warehouses.

Dr Magdalena Soffia, the study's lead author, told The Guardian that the problem was not necessarily to do with the new technologies themselves, but the way that they are adopted into the workplace.

"We don't want to claim that there is some sort of determinism in what technology causes, in terms of wellbeing," she said. "We say it really depends on the context: on lots of structural factors, on environmental conditions, how it is designed and how it is deployed. So lots of human decisions."

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https://www.techspot.com/news/102248-modern-workplace-tech-linked-lower-employee-well-study.html

 

[Theinsanegamer]

All the trackers and cameras make it clear: You are in a prison, we dont like you, you will do as we say, peon! Unsurprisingly, all this tracking makes employees feel unappreciated when some bovating middle manager wants to know why you didnt do as much work as Betty, when you have totally different jobs.

there's a good reason people think the 70s-90s were a golden age compared to today.

 

[Dimitriid]

In related news, the opposite measures of actually investing trust on your employees by say, allowing them to work from home, have curiously enough the opposite effect on productivity: people who don't have to commute for 4 hours per day and spend half their salary on transportation and meals are somehow more motivated to still perform the same tasks or even more of them.

Yet much like DRM a lot of people with a vast interests in obfuscating reality will continue to argue that no actually, you need to get back into the office and allow your employer to spy on you at all times and somehow that will make you more productive since living under the stress of constant fear is notoriously great for both physical and mental health!

 

[Neatfeatguy]

In related news, the opposite measures of actually investing trust on your employees by say, allowing them to work from home, have curiously enough the opposite effect on productivity: people who don't have to commute for 4 hours per day and spend half their salary on transportation and meals are somehow more motivated to still perform the same tasks or even more of them.

Yet much like DRM a lot of people with a vast interests in obfuscating reality will continue to argue that no actually, you need to get back into the office and allow your employer to spy on you at all times and somehow that will make you more productive since living under the stress of constant fear is notoriously great for both physical and mental health!

Working remotely is beneficial to some people, but most can not do it efficiently. They are unable to keep themselves self motivated to complete their work properly.

Most people are extroverts, they thrive on human interactions. Many of those people actually do better in an environment with others around to work with, bounce ideas off of and so on. An office environment is actually ideal for a lot of people.

If a remote job was setup properly, those remote workers could be under surveillance just as much as someone at an office location (or more) to make sure they are being productive.

The only real benefit that I see having a remote job is no commute. You save time and money that way, but you won't really see any other benefits because any employer could properly setup their employees to have cameras on them at all times in their work space and monitoring software on all their work devices to ensure they are keeping busy.

I think any possible remote job should be done on a need by need basis, depending on the job and the employee. It's not for everyone, regardless of how good it may sound.

 

[NumberNine]

What if I told you the issue isn't the tech, but the people implementing it?

 

[kira setsu]

In related news, the opposite measures of actually investing trust on your employees by say, allowing them to work from home, have curiously enough the opposite effect on productivity: people who don't have to commute for 4 hours per day and spend half their salary on transportation and meals are somehow more motivated to still perform the same tasks or even more of them.

Yet much like DRM a lot of people with a vast interests in obfuscating reality will continue to argue that no actually, you need to get back into the office and allow your employer to spy on you at all times and somehow that will make you more productive since living under the stress of constant fear is notoriously great for both physical and mental health!

there's no clear answer to the work from home question, im sure for lots of people its a dream come true, but I'd also love to know their setup at home, I work with people who have the option to work from home for a few days a week and the common point is theyre all older or higher ups and own homes, they pretty much worked up to that benefit.

meanwhile if wfh became the default for me tomorrow I would step in front of rush hour traffic by friday, because being stuck in my apt would evaporate my soul, and im nowhere near an extrovert, I just dont wanna be cooped up at home, my retreat.....doing work, that sounds like hell imho.

the best things for companies to do is build themselves up so they can be flexible and have wfh as a viable option, let folks start in the office and if theyre doing well there offer up the alternative and see how that goes, meanwhile people need to not take advantage of it then get all surprised pikachu when its snatched cause you slacked off.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Rule of the Internet 101: If there is a discussion about employee health on Techspot, it will be a discussion about work from home.

 

[Zsoltblabla]

We are clearly heading towards a world where most humans are obsolete and exist on benefits and government credits while a handful of people own everything there is.
The world os getting worse every year now. We peaked at 2000. Its all downhill since then

 

[BuckarooBonzaii]

We are clearly heading towards a world where most humans are obsolete and exist on benefits and government credits while a handful of people own everything there is.
The world os getting worse every year now. We peaked at 2000. Its all downhill since then

Twilight Zone, The Obsolete Man.

 

[daffy duck]

Your workplace doesn't need any of this stuff to make you miserable. Just having utter mor0ns and b@stards running the show will do the job very nicely of making people miserable.

 

[human7]

We are clearly heading towards a world where most humans are obsolete and exist on benefits and government credits while a handful of people own everything there is.
The world os getting worse every year now. We peaked at 2000. Its all downhill since then

I hope for a Star Trek, Federation style civilization one day, but the Star Trek story is that we get there by going through a dystopia first. Seems more and more likely. Mark your calendar for September, the Bell Riots are this year. Though fictional, those riots were caused by the very things gen AI and robotics is causing us to confront - job loss, and possibly someday, mass homelessness.

When humans loose the ability to sell their labor to make a living, what do we have left? To avoid becoming a dystopia, I'm not at all sure about this, but we may have to abandon currency, wages, buying, and selling - everywhere, all at once, and adopt something else.

 

[toooooot]

Maybe it is not the tech alone but some of those employer trying to raise efficiency of the employees so high that they need to be as perfect as those apps and robots making them better at work but draining their mental energy?

 

[Theinsanegamer]

I hope for a Star Trek, Federation style civilization one day, but the Star Trek story is that we get there by going through a dystopia first. Seems more and more likely. Mark your calendar for September, the Bell Riots are this year. Though fictional, those riots were caused by the very things gen AI and robotics is causing us to confront - job loss, and possibly someday, mass homelessness.

When humans loose the ability to sell their labor to make a living, what do we have left? To avoid becoming a dystopia, I'm not at all sure about this, but we may have to abandon currency, wages, buying, and selling - everywhere, all at once, and adopt something else.

Star Trek's entire premise is on people giving up power to allow everyone to benefit from the "automated gay luxury space communism" future. The thing is, much like the communist manifesto itself, this seems to utterly miss the point of human behavior, or assumes that the dystopia was so great it overwrote human psychology.

The FAR more likely future, rather then Star trek, is more like Elysium mixed with Judge Dredd.

 

[Uncle Al]

We had a company that engaged in this until one of our employee's found a way to "broadcast" the same information about the upper management to the whole company .... boy was that some day!!!

 

[human7]

Star Trek's entire premise is on people giving up power to allow everyone to benefit from the "automated gay luxury space communism" future. The thing is, much like the communist manifesto itself, this seems to utterly miss the point of human behavior, or assumes that the dystopia was so great it overwrote human psychology.

The FAR more likely future, rather then Star trek, is more like Elysium mixed with Judge Dredd.

Well, there was a nuclear World War 3 on Star Trek Earth, so they did have a pretty great dystopia. One of the reasons it worked after that was an abundance of resources, e.g. the replicator. I don't expect a Star Trek style future to actually happen, especially since a lot of the technology seems unlikely. The Expanse is more likely. Our history of colonization is that the colonies tend to rebel after a while, I don't see that changing with the Moon or Mars if they can get to a semi-independent state resource wise.

We kinda have Elysium today, at least with the likes of Mark Z building their billion dollar fortresses, it could indeed be more pronounced in the future. I don't know much about Judge Dredd, from the wiki article though it is something we have today sadly in many countries.

But, I can still dream for a happy-go-lucky future.

 

[toooooot]

In related news, the opposite measures of actually investing trust on your employees by say, allowing them to work from home, have curiously enough the opposite effect on productivity: people who don't have to commute for 4 hours per day and spend half their salary on transportation and meals are somehow more motivated to still perform the same tasks or even more of them.

Yet much like DRM a lot of people with a vast interests in obfuscating reality will continue to argue that no actually, you need to get back into the office and allow your employer to spy on you at all times and somehow that will make you more productive since living under the stress of constant fear is notoriously great for both physical and mental health!

Someone who makes your life miserable in the office will probably find a way to do it even if you are working from home. You not seeing them does not end interactions and control.

 

[erickmendes]

Bussiness as usual... You are an asset, just as any other asset that companies make work together to make it work in the most productive way with maximum profit. Employee well-being only matters to the extent it makes it able to work as pretended. No demonizing here, I just think that's the plain truth.

 

[RudyBob]

When you are miserable at work that's a bad thing. It's more than the job though