RIYADH: Employee surveillance measures adopted by companies in Saudi Arabia could reduce employee confidence and increase employee turnover rate, a global study showed. As many as 86 percent of Saudi-based firms have either applied or plan to apply these employee surveillance measures. Half of them already experienced a radical increase in employee turnover, according to the study conducted by California-based VMware. The recently applied hybrid working model utilizes extensive remote monitoring methods, putting at risk the continuity of the whole system. The procedures include monitoring of emails, web browsing, collaboration tools, video surveillance, attention tracking via webcams, and keylogger software. “Globally we are seeing organizations shift permanently to hybrid work models that don’t require knowledge workers to be office-based all the time” VMware Senior Vice President and General Manager, Shankar Iyer, said. “With this shift, employers should proceed with caution when replacing presentism with monitoring tools,” he added. Employees argue that the hybrid working model could improve their efficiency and result in a more appropriate evaluation of their work by their employers. However, the loss of transparency imposed by these surveillance measures would make them feel less trustworthy by their employers, resulting in a loss of their drive and motivation, according to VMware.