Where does productivity gain stop and surveillance begin?

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Where does productivity stop and surveillance begin?

Transcription in online meetings

One of the most undervalued and underestimated powers of AI for productivity improvement is transcription—converting speech to text. I mostly do this with my iPhone or Macbook and Whisper, OpenAI's software. I use it incredibly often; it’s an easy way to get my thoughts written down.

The Datafication of Conversations

Many software companies now offer advanced transcription in their online meeting platforms.

Conversations are automatically converted into searchable text, allowing you to review what was said later. This creates an additional source of information, with popular examples including MS Teams, Webex, Fireflies, and Otter.

(When you read this and you're using one of these software programs, then this is about you.)

Some providers' software even tracks and analyzes who was speaking, for how long, what was discussed, and with what sentiment.

Everything that was once intangible is now captured in data.

Insights and Misinterpretation

This technology opens the door to full transparency within organizations. Everyone can follow a meeting remotely. Managers can receive a summary of your meeting in their inbox.

Professionals can even create custom prompts that filter all relevant information from a past meeting, specifically for them.

So... management, HR, communications—everyone in the organization can write a prompt to extract specific information from a past meeting, even if they didn't attend.

HR can distill what was said about HR and management can distill what was said about management or leadership.

In a way, this is a fantastic innovation. Team members who couldn’t attend a meeting can now catch up quickly without needing to watch the entire recording. Managers can see which topics consistently spark lengthy, intense discussions. The software may even reveal bottlenecks within the company or highlight issues that remain unresolved.

A new source of information with insights that were not there before. Valuable and useful.

However, there are downsides too.

For example: summaries don’t always reflect reality accurately.

Context and nuance can easily disappear.

A sharply worded comment may come across harsher in text than intended. What was logical and understandable in the conversation's dynamics can seem loaded and prone to misinterpretation when reduced to plain text.

Impact on Culture

But the most crucial question is:

What happens to your organizational culture when every sentence, every comment is recorded, transcribed and searchable?

Will transcription software become a surveillance tool?

Would you still voice a critical opinion in a meeting, knowing that others in the organization can later review every word?

How open and transparant would you be in a meeting where, theoretically, the entire organization could be listening in?

And what if statements you once made during a 1-on-1 with a colleague are suddenly mentioned during a performance review?

And might more introverted employees feel pressured to speak up, just to improve their statistics?

There’s also a risk that this culture of constant digital surveillance could undermine the open atmosphere needed for healthy discussions. After all, no one wants their words taken out of context and later used against them.

And if everyone starts acting in a socially acceptable manner in every meeting, how can you receive real insights and honest feedback?

Control vs. Trust

Control is tempting, but trust is crucial within an organization.

So, the real question is not whether transcription software is useful (it is!) but rather how to prevent it from becoming a subtle form of surveillance.

This requires clear guidelines: Who can access the data? How long will it be retained? In what context will it be used?

Only with transparency about the “how, what, who, and when” of transcription software can we balance productivity gains with a healthy organizational culture.

Productivity is valuable, but trust is priceless.

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Kind regards, Jarno

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