Samsung is one of many companies that have been pushing for employees to return to the office fulltime. However, now the brand is taking RTO efforts in the U.S. one step further with a tool that tracks attendance for a group in its semiconductor business.
In an internal email, seen by Business Insider, Samsung informed employees about the new compliance tracking tool. “This tool will provide each Manager with visibility to the number of days & time in building metrics for each team member,” the email said.
It continued, “This will ensure that team members are fulfilling their expectation regarding in office work – however that is defined with their business leader – as well as guarding against instances of lunch/coffee badging.”
In 2023 the brand embraced a global hybrid work model, rolling out 500 new jobs. While the specifics varied, the majority of the postings (58.3%) included the ability to work from home at least part of the work week. The brand also gave employees in the company’s corporate offices in South Korea one Friday off a month.
However, last April, after posting lower than expected sales, the brand asked its corporate executives to begin working six days a week in order to “inject a sense of crisis” into its workforce. “Considering that performance of our major units, including Samsung Electronics Co., fell short of expectations in 2023, we are introducing the six-day work week for executives to inject a sense of crisis and make all-out efforts to overcome this crisis,” a Samsung Group executive told the Korea Economic Daily.
This May, Samsung asked employees to begin returning to the office full time. The following month, it updated employees on the RTO initiative. “We are already experiencing increased foot traffic daily, with more cars in the parking lot and hungry mouths in our cafeterias on Fridays, to name just a few signs,” Samsung said in an email viewed by BI. At the time, Samsung also noted that it was developing a tool to track attendance.
Employee tracking might sound offbeat, but workplace surveillance is on the rise. According to a recent ExpressVPN survey, 74% of U.S. employers now use online tracking tools to monitor work activities. That includes real-time screen tracking (59%) and web browsing logs (62%). Likewise, 61% use AI-powered analytics to measure productivity and around 67% collect biometric data to monitor things like behavior and attendance.
Still, that doesn’t mean it’s popular among employees or feels all that ethical. While most companies (three out of four) use biometric surveillance, only 22% of employees know they’re being monitored, according to the same report. Likewise, 17% of employees said they’d be “very likely” to resign over workplace surveillance. Another 32% said they’d strongly consider it.
It’s unclear how Samsung’s new tracking tool will work, how closely employees will be monitored, and how many employees will be impacted. Fast Company reached out to the brand but did not hear back by the time of publication. Samsung told employees they will find out more about the tracking system soon.
“Additional information regarding the new tool will be made available to Managers this month,” the email to employees said.
