Young workers would trade social media privacy for job security

Here’s a piece Blackwell sent me that’s a sad commentary on where our society is heading (already there?).

Young workers would trade social media privacy for job security.

This is really sad and ties into my against the wheel post. Rather than tell the man to f off, this piece suggests young people are just going to fall in line. Rather than find a job that doesn’t monitor their online habits, they’re going to work for the machine. They’re going to be part of the problem, instead of being part of the solution. My gosh, is this really what they’re thinking? I hope not.

From the piece:

A third of young workers would be happy to let their employer monitor their social media activity if it meant greater job security, according to research from PwC.

PwC’s report, The future of work: A journey to 2022, says that monitoring workers’ social media and personal data will become commonplace as employers strive to understand what motivates their workforce, why people might move jobs and to improve employee wellbeing.

PwC’s global survey of 10,000 workers and 500 human resource (HR) professionals says that employers could routinely monitor workers’ Facebook and Twitter postings to ensure that company policies are focused on reducing staff turnover and reinforcing engagement with business objectives.

PwC predicts that data monitoring of employees will increase over the next decade as Generation Y is absorbed into the workforce – by 2020 around half of the global workforce will be aged 18-32, bringing different attitudes to work, technology and personal data.

Research into Generation Y suggests that a new cohort of young people are increasingly rejecting the long hours and gruelling work regimes of their parents and favour a ‘work to live’ rather than a ‘live to work’ attitude to career and employment.

The research reveals that this younger generation is more open to sharing their personal data with their employees, with 36% of Generation Y workers saying they would be happy to do so.