Survey Says Bosses Fear Being Filmed By Employees 159
New submitter Cazekiel writes "If you think your boss is a fearless, miserable beast whose only worries lie in how well his company or business competes, think again. The 'Business Video Behavior Project' survey conducted by Qumu reveals that those in-charge are growing more and more paranoid about something the Average Joe fears just walking down the street nowadays: employees who will 'secretly film him with his metaphorical pants down and then post the footage for public delectation.' It would seem that it doesn't matter if you're powerful, wealthy and lording over hundreds of cubicles; they know the internet exists, everyone has a cell phone camera and thick wallets don't make discarded banana peels magically move out of their path." The company that paid for the study, note, promises to "securely distribute business video simultaneously over multiple Edge routes," so they probably don't mind some workplace paranoia.
Good! (Score:5, Interesting)
No reason only ordinary people should go through life feeling like an amoebae under a microscope.
I enjoy the occasional article posted to Slashdot about law enforcement organizations lobbying against police being videod ( it is time to retire the word "filmed" as obsolete ).
I love the irony of the authorities, at least some of them, being told what they tell us.
"Gee officer, if you are doing your job and following all the rules then you have nothing to be worried about"
Re:I have an idea (Score:5, Interesting)
Problem: 100 people on a sinking boat, only enough lifeboat space for 50
Ethical solution: Pick 50 people at random for the boats
Politically-correct statement the public wants the captain to say: "Put a few extra people in the boats! We'll save as many as we can!!">
Politically-correct statement the company wants him to say: "We'll make a lottery, remove ourselves, and pick 10 people at random, then we'll let them take their families, and pick more until we run out of space"
Quick statement: "We'll pick 50 people at random. There will be orphans."
Frankly, I'd be pissed if my knee-jerk reaction statements were recorded, too, regardless of whether my behavior is ethical or not. The public at large is so quick to become enraged, and the media is so willing to sensationalize, that anything but silence in a bad situation is a PR mess.
Re:I have an idea (Score:5, Interesting)
Reality solution [wikipedia.org]: Crew grabs lifeboats and leaves the sinking ship, passengers will survive, or not, who cares.
Bosses make rules (Score:2, Interesting)
And one of them might be: No recording devices on company property. Another is: Anything recorded on company time/property belongs to the company.
I've worked at an outfit* where these were the rules. In addition, management refused to contact employees via anything other than company phones, voicemail, e-mail, pagers, etc. In other words, no records were to be left of any business on anything they didn't control.
*At one point, they were assessed a civil penalty of $500 million for ethical violations. It was civil only because they claimed they were unaware of the applicable federal regulations. Folllowing that, they carried on as before, but secured all intra-company communications that could demonstrate intent associated with subsequent activities.
Re:I have an idea (Score:2, Interesting)
Option 3 seems like the best compromise, all around, and if the company is willing to bring the client and family out for a visit (which happens all the time), the option of showing him OUR culture opens up. This seems like the best ethical decision, long-term, because you have a better chance, over time, of teaching said client how business is done ethically in the US, just as he has a chance to teach you more about his own culture does business. Without this type of compromise on a broad scale, what you're suggesting leads to a breakdown of international trade.
The point is, just because you say "Option 1 is the correct answer" without providing support for your argument doesn't make it so, and there are hundreds of permutations that should be considered in situations like this. It's not as easy as you make it sound, nor are the "businesspeople" all a bunch of greedy douchebags bribing their way to the top to make a quick buck (most, maybe, but not all. =)