Journalists at UK newspaper up in arms after workplace monitors are installed

Talk about treating your staff like children.

Workplace monitors on the desks of Daily Telegraph journalists were removed after Buzzfeed wrote a story about them. The system works. The monitors were motion and heat sensors that indicated whether a worker was at his or her desk. Journalists showed up at work on Monday morning to find small black boxes attached to their desks. A quick Google search showed that they were wireless motion detectors, made by a company called OccupEye, that monitor whether individuals are using their desks. Not exactly how you build trust between staff and management. “Quite simply, if a space is used, your OccupEye sensors will record it and you are guaranteed to know about it,” the website states. The information is then fed back to bosses. Credit: Occupeye Buzzfeed found out that an email had been sent to staff explaining that the monitors were there to “make ​our floors in ​the building as energy efficient as possible” while reducing “the amount of power we consume for heating, lighting and cooling the building at times of low usage." This was stated to be part of the Telegraph’s commitment to green energy measures. However, nowhere on the OccupEye website does it say anything about monitoring environmental factors. Before the devices were withdrawn, one staff member said: “Never before has taking a sh*t on company time felt so rebellious.”