CNV: employers monitor more than half a million home workers partly via software

In a survey by CNV of 1,200 employees who work from home, 13 percent indicated that their employer uses software or not to monitor whether they are actually working. The organization indicates that this may be illegal and in any case unnecessary.

When asked whether the employer or supervisor monitors whether the home worker is working, 53 of the 1200 respondents answered that this was completely the case and another 107 participants that this was partly the case. CNV had ‘with software’ in brackets for the question, which makes it unclear for how many respondents this is actually done via software. In any case, 1048 people indicated that to their knowledge they are not monitored.

In any case, CNV draws the conclusion that more than half a million workers are continuously monitored by their employer. “In practice, this number is probably even higher, because not everyone knows the business software well,” says Piet Fortuin, chairman of CNV. He points out that employers may only monitor employees in exceptional cases, such as suspected abuse. He also calls the monitoring unnecessary and counterproductive, because employees at home are often more efficient and productive.

In the survey, 24 out of 1200 respondents indicated that their employer regularly checks whether they were online, and this was partially the case for 75 people. Conversely, 1060 homeworkers indicated that their employers trusted them completely to do their job properly at home, while 48 did not and 100 partially did not. The NOS cites Capterra, a business software comparison site, which states that demand for monitoring software in the first quarter of 2021 was 58 percent higher than in the first quarter of 2020.