As long as there has been employment, employees have been monitored (Nebeker & Tatum, 1993). However as the progress of technology becomes more rapid and equipment for monitoring is available to all, surveillance in the workplace has become a more alarming issue and the boundaries of what is necessary and what is an invasion of privacy are very vague. A case study presented for scrutiny is that of the ‘German supermarket chain Lidl accused of snooping on staff’.
Many employers appoint surveillance within the workplace for a variety of reasons such as safety, prevention of theft or misuse and performance checks. The issues identified within this article are that of whether the monitoring that was carried out was necessary or whether
This burden could then be even further intensified by the ‘20 percent lower wages’ (appendix 1.1) the employees receive. This acts as both an intrinsic factor as it lowers employee job satisfaction and moral; as well as adds stress from the non-work aspect due to having low finances and the employees not being able to support their families. Refer to a quote from one of the employees ‘when one needs money, one lets many things pass’. This fear of job loss from employees can further add to the non-work sources of stress as “tensions of the job are not left behind and soon affect the family” (Cooper and Cartwright, Managing workplace stress, page 21).
Cartwright and Cooper’s model (figure 1) includes long hours as part of the intrinsic factors as they “appear to take a toll on employee health” (Cartwright and Cooper 2007, page 15). Lidl workers are ‘pressed to work additional hours’ (appendix 1.1) which will therefore cause stress to the employees and further more adding to it, they are made to do so ‘without pay’.