Yeah, I think bosses who freak out about people not being productive while working from home underestimate how much people can avoid being productive while physically at work.

Exactly. Wrong mental model. Your best bet is to hire/make/keep people interested in being productive. When this is lost there isn't going much you can do to improve productivity. Keeping employee chained to their desks will not magically make things get done. This is so naive. I wonder how humanity landed in the situation where half of all managers don't get the first thing about managing people.

Given the panic-buy, I'm sure you're right about most people thinking this will keep people productive.

I've wanted something like this before, though, when I got some bad people on my team who weren't worth what they were getting paid and were sometimes a net negative on the team. We couldn't fire them because everything was at least somewhat subjective and HR and my own boss wanted a solid case. Oh they didn't get anything done? That's subjective - maybe the assigned tasks were harder than we thought. We need more evidence. Oh they were on Facebook most of the time when I walked into their office? Maybe it was a coincidence. We need more evidence.

I feel like, "look - here are screenshots from every 30 seconds and they really spent 90% of their day farting around on dumb websites", would have ended that far more efficiently than how we eventually got rid of them. It's less about prevention, and more about a way to fix the problem when people already aren't productive.

This is ripe for abuse by bosses - but at least part of that is because of bad employees too.

I feel for any person that has to deal with this type of employee. It is very demoralizing to give responsibilities you know are not going to be handled well (but you still have to do this), it is also very demoralizing to the rest of the team to observe this unfairness go unpunished.

Still, I would focus my efforts on the productive part of the team. Making them feel safe and appreciated seems to be more worth than spying on the ones that drag the team down. People do observe how you treat team members with "problems" and will see that your measured response means they can feel safe. Safety I find to be prerequisite to healthy work atmosphere.

This is reaching for some extreme tools, while simpler solution is available. At some company size, network audit is just required. You can get information like "this person is using Facebook all the time" without actually screenshoting their Facebook screen. This solved a lot of privacy issues.

It is cheaper to hire someone like that than a really good manager. Also if you hire a lot of managers like this you end up with an organization of hundreds who are running around looking busy.

...at the same time - it can be pretty difficult to remain focused at home, especially if you also have kids at home because their schools are closed.

I doubt my efficiency is approaching even 50% of what it was a month ago.

Everyone is different.

Sure, but is spyware the thing that would change that for you? Or would you still be less productive only now also feel greater fear, further reducing your morale?

If it is a company PC - it is not illegal spyware.

Courts have repeatedly confirmed that employees have zero expectation of privacy on their work devices/sevices.

I am of the opinion that company PC is company PC and it has a right to monitor what is going on there.

But I also think employers should be responsible to ensure employees are notified of the scope of possible monitoring. Some people are absolutely clueless.

It is not that difficult, really. My company says whatever I do is subject to monitoring and there is no expectation of privacy. It also says, "Please, don't use it for anything that is not related to work".

We live in times when you can have a PC in your pocket, there is absolutely no need to do private business on company PC.

Oh, I am not productive at all right now because I have two young kids at home with me. I am at maybe 5% of my normal productivity.

You don't need an app to know that. I tell my boss every day.

It's like nobody ever watched Office Space.

It is a moral thing for people like that. They want to see 8+ hours of work a day. There is not much thought given to what was accomplished in those 8 hours as opposed to what could have been accomplished in a culture that prioritized results over the appearance of busyness.

Exactly. I don't do it on purpose but there are too many unnecessary meetings while at work. I'm being at least twice as productive at home.

#2 is super important for folks who aren't used to working remotely to take to heart. It's really easy to feel the (self-imposed) pressure to be available all the time and feel anxious because you're not doing work for 8 hours straight -- that's the road to burnout. In reality most people only do a couple hours of "heads down" work on a normal day; removing the office politics and moving to a more asynchronous communication style simply makes obvious how little "work" actually gets done at most offices.

Our CEO very much pushed the same: first and foremost look after your family. Don't stress over making paid time off numbers work out properly.

He's possibly the best CEO I've ever seen operate. And even when I'm in the office only once a year, he still knows who I am and wants to get dinner with me and the others.

I consider his existence a significant part of my compensation package when I run the numbers.

That sounds like a good work environment.

My company decided that we would likely have to go remote-only about 6 weeks ago and asked people to start planning out how to make it happen. One of the things was to redo all deadlines with the expectation that family would need to come first.

I work at a trading firm in Chicago, and it has been the same for us. They've been very understanding, and have welcomed barking dogs and crying babies in the background during our standups over zoom.

Interestingly, my workplace that has also been very reasonable about this and expects a drop in productivity, is also a bank. Have banks turned into reasonable and humane companies all of a sudden?

Ironically, 2008 caused banks to be very resilient to events like this one. Now banks are not allowed to keep large positions in their own name and should be basically neutral to whatever happens on the market. Banks are supposed to earn their living on services provided.

What this means for banks is they are doing excellent business right now.

The only significant problem is counterparty risk. As banks are basically insurers in case of some contracts they take the risk that the counterparty will default on their obligation. As large number of parties default this creates an amount of loss. But banks have also regulations to control the amount of possible loss so it is not going to be easy for any bank to bankrupt just because large number of companies go out of business.