Can a company force you to turn on your Zoom camera?

[moorfield]

Personally it wouldn't bother me. I have a daily team call currently where we agreed to have cameras on, people can see if I am on/offline on skype during the day already, and in a team whatsapp group as well. If people wan't to watch me just sitting at my desk, more fool them. What they can't actually see of course is what I am doing on the other side while giving the appearance of a "bum on seat" - online training course, personal projects, posting on lemonfool, binge watching iplayer etc. etc. I could quite happily sit at my desk all day and find stuff to do. Over the years I've learnt the art of timing work delivery and using Parkinson's Law to my advantage (why circulate an email at midday Friday concluding a package of work when you can leave it to 5.30pm, it's amazing how useful "end of week" can be sometimes ).

[Mike4]

Personally it wouldn't bother me. I have a daily team call currently where we agreed to have cameras on, people can see if I am on/offline on skype during the day already, and in a team whatsapp group as well. If people wan't to watch me just sitting at my desk, more fool them.

I do find myself wondering if the objection to having the webcam turned ON all the time is simply that the objectors might be spotted on screen picking their nose, scratching their gonads, whatever.

A screenshot grabbed and circulated could be highly embarrassing...

[Itsallaguess]

Can a company you work for force you to turn on your Zoom camera?

I feel this is very creepy, sinister, and Orwellian not to mention an invasion of privacy.

A camera is not required to communicate and if it hasn't been required all year, since people started working from home at the end of March/beginning of April, but now a company is saying at the beginning of December that it is required, and is harassing you to turn it on, is that legal?

Zoom software has been installed for probably two years and nobody has used it until this year.

So far I would say a third to half have never had a camera switched on, however, some are now starting to drop like flies and fold to the pressure despite being greatly uncomfortable with it.

Finally, if you continue to rebel against this and not switch on the camera are they allowed to hold it against, discipline you, or sack you, if you are otherwise doing a great job?

Can you expand a little on the new company expectations regarding the Zoom camera usage?

Are they wanting you to turn it on all the time, during all working hours, or are they asking for Zoom-camera participation only during team meetings?

It is one thing for a company to perhaps expect reasonable participation in team-meetings, which might perhaps include camera usage if there's not an overriding reason why that shouldn't take place (although recognising that there might very well *be* an overriding reason why that shouldn't take place...), but I don't think it would be reasonable for the company to expect 'all working hours' camera monitoring, so it would be good to hear where on that spectrum they're currently placing this issue?

I do sympathise here, by the way. I think the working from home situation is so new for many of us right now that it's already difficult enough to manage what are often very blurred home/work boundaries, and I imagine that for people to perhaps just be getting used to that side of things, mentally as well as physically, and then be hit by the prospect of in-home 'employer-cameras' to be rolled out, it might feel like a big step too far into an already difficult work/life balance...

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

[moorfield]

I do find myself wondering if the objection to having the webcam turned ON all the time is simply that the objectors might be spotted on screen picking their nose, scratching their gonads, whatever.

A screenshot grabbed and circulated could be highly embarrassing...

In the current age where one is normally not more than 6ft away from a smartphone camera in urban areas, that is not a new problem ...

To answer the OPs question, a company's senior management and hr have to lead by example for such a wheeze to be acceptable I think, and if they weren't I would certainly be putting them on the spot and asking them in company meetings/town halls etc. why not. I'm old enough not to care about challenging my superiors, and publically, where possible.

[stevensfo]

Personally it wouldn't bother me. I have a daily team call currently where we agreed to have cameras on, people can see if I am on/offline on skype during the day already, and in a team whatsapp group as well. If people wan't to watch me just sitting at my desk, more fool them. What they can't actually see of course is what I am doing on the other side while giving the appearance of a "bum on seat" - online training course, personal projects, posting on lemonfool, binge watching iplayer etc. etc. I could quite happily sit at my desk all day and find stuff to do. Over the years I've learnt the art of timing work delivery and using Parkinson's Law to my advantage (why circulate an email at midday Friday concluding a package of work when you can leave it to 5.30pm, it's amazing how useful "end of week" can be sometimes ).

We used to receive emails from a secretary that appeared to have been sent about 9pm or even later. A colleague laughed and introduced us to something we didn't know; the ability to set the time at which you want your email sent. Naturally, we used its full potential. From that moment on, any onlooker would have assumed we were working all night!

Steve

[Lanark]

One of our managers back in 2018 insisted on people having their camera on all the time when working from home, a bunch of their employees started wearing hats and goggles, pointing the camera at the ceiling and smearing vaseline on the camera.

Eventually it went up to HR, and once they looked into it the surveillance requirement quietly went away.

For occasional Zoom meetings, I think it may be different, the devil is always in the details.

An easy way to opt out without attracting any attention, is to turn the camera on but turn off HD in the settings and make sure your lighting is terrible. A strong light directly behind you, so your face is in shadow - they wont be able to see a thing.

[stevensfo]

One of our managers back in 2018 insisted on people having their camera on all the time when working from home, a bunch of their employees started wearing hats and goggles, pointing the camera at the ceiling and smearing vaseline on the camera.

Eventually it went up to HR, and once they looked into it the surveillance requirement quietly went away.

For occasional Zoom meetings, I think it may be different, the devil is always in the details.

An easy way to opt out without attracting any attention, is to turn the camera on but turn off HD in the settings and make sure your lighting is terrible. A strong light directly behind you, so your face is in shadow - they wont be able to see a thing.

I remember reading about a teleworking Mum who had a very young son, also having lessons via internet. Apparently she checked on him and discovered that he'd placed a photo of himself in front of the webcam and was busy playing with toys.

Knowing our meetings, if a person tried that trick, nobody would realise and the person would probably get promoted!


Steve

[AleisterCrowley]

Yes, I didn't quite understand the context of the question. However, the camera in my laptop doesn't work, in that it has a piece of masking tape taped over it.

Same with mine

We have been asked to turn on camera by someone hosting a Teams call, but the blunt response was..."No, can't do that. Security and Compliance reasons..."
I do sometimes mention I have a hardware disable on my camera (black insulating tape- unhackable)