Employee surveillance & occupational stress: An interpretative phenomenological analysis

Abstract

Employee surveillance is not a novelty. What is profoundly new is the introduction of sophisticated means of employee surveillance, due to the proliferation of technology, and the possible impact of this development on occupational stress. The primary research question is how employees, who experience employee surveillance, make sense of being stressed. Moreover, the second-tier research questions that are used are to what extent employees' perceptions can be explained by Communication Privacy Management Theory and by Privacy Calculus Theory. The importance of the study lies on the fact that it aims to further investigate the specific effect of employee surveillance on occupational stress, without measuring the actual surveillance that takes place. Specifically, the study uses interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) to explore how eight (8) employees experience employee surveillance and the possible impact on occupational stress. The primary reason for singling out on IPA is due to the consistency with the epistemological position of the research question. Additionally, the sample is homogeneous and of a small size; the major criterion for participant’s selection is their ability to grant access to a specific perspective on the phenomenon under study, in a sense that they do not represent a population, but a perspective. For data collection, eight (8) semi-structured interviews are conducted, and an interview schedule is used with prepared questions, with possible prompts. The analysis begins with the initial comments. They are analyzed and emergent themes are developed, which are further analyzed. This process is resulted in the development of sub-ordinate themes, and the identification, using subsumption, of three super-ordinate themes: 1. Big Brother Metaphor, 2. The psychological consequences of surveillance, 3. Privacy and Boundaries. Each super-ordinate theme, along with its sub-ordinate themes, is further analyzed. The discussion presents the key points of each super-ordinate theme, with reference in the extant literature. The findings reveal that although employee surveillance is often perceived/experienced as a possible stressor that leads to occupational stress, it seems that the relationship is more complicated since many factors have a significant effect on it, such as transparency and timely feedback. This study adds to the existing body of research by bringing a renewed level of awareness to the importance of the impact of employee surveillance on occupational stress, focusing on employee’s experience of the phenomenon.