8. Is this well-known bank using AI to spy on its employees?

Hello all 👋🏾

Another week, another opportunity to digest a #wearedistributed newsletter entry with the latest global employment news, workplace issues, tools to make work/life seamless, and a green flag to help job seekers, to mention a few!

Last week, we talked about the Writers Guild of America East and West strike and their demands, the importance of clear job descriptions with realistic descriptions, and Help Scout and Rock as the Distributed Company & Tool respectively. You can read or (re-read) the #wearedistributed's last entry here.

Let’s get started for this week. 👇🏼

Top Global Jobs of the Week

1/ Event Marketing Manager - Hygraph

2/ Chief Revenue Officer - Toggl

3/ QA Engineer - Customer.io

4/ Business Developer Representative - Nebulab

5/ Senior Android Engineer - DuckDuckGo

Do you know anyone suited for these positions? Do not hesitate to share this newsletter with them so they can apply. We've got 51 roles across different departments on our job board!

Know any employers hiring for roles in at least 3 continents? Direct them to our job board to list the role(s) at a discount.

Global Employment Advocate of the Week

We’re featuring Jesse Dahms as our Global Employment Advocate of the Week.

Jesse Dahms works for Oyster, a global employment platform, and his entire LinkedIn Feed is dedicated to helping employers figure out how to hire the best global talent.

Looking to move to Portugal or Canada? He’s got entire posts dedicated to what payment would look like if you live in those countries and are hired or if you’re hiring someone who lives there.

In a LinkedIn post, he discusses a few of the reasons why hiring global talent is the smart choice for employers. We especially love his point about giving access to those talented individuals who may not have access otherwise.

We’re also hoping he continues his series of how to hire in different countries!

Workplace Callout

A whistleblower on Reddit has recently had their account banned and their post deleted after giving inside context to a recent Business Insider article about abusive surveillance practices at JP Morgan Chase.

While we can’t verify the validity of the account’s claims (they claim Chase’s monitoring system goes as far as to monitor your face to detect anything that’s said, stress levels, and can even tell if you’re in an agitated mood, and all this can be used against you!), we can dig into the Business Insider article that uncovered what verified employees are saying. 

The fear is stemming from a powerful data collection tool that JP Morgan Chase has created called WADU (Workplace Activity Data Utility). Since it’s 2 years in utilization, it’s become the source of a lot of mistrust and ‘paranoia’ from employees.

"It's fostered paranoia. It's fostered distrust. And, to be honest with you, it's fostered a lot of disrespect," [one employee] said to Business Insider. "There's a lot of sentiment around Chase that we're just a number. That's all we are."

But what has Chase had to say about WADU’s purpose? According to a “company official,” the information that WADU gathers is used solely to track efficiency, workplace health and safety, and resiliency, but with WADU tracking employees from the moment they log into their virtual workspace until the moment they log out, it would seem every action is up for scrutiny.

Business Insider has even written an in-depth article on how WADU works, and we’ve got some key points here that had us raising our eyebrows in shock:

• How much time on the phone and Zoom calls are meticulously tracked

• They’re thinking of utilizing a new tool to see if cameras are switched on during Zoom calls

• Senior staffers will actually call employees if they’re taking personal days off work

• Records are actively being made to monitor non-compliant employees

The article even states that employees have resorted to talking outside of regulated communication systems and one employee had even installed a “mouse jigger” that would make it so WADU can’t detect inactivity and dock hours.

We think it’s pretty obvious that treating your employees like children who need to be monitored is the exact opposite approach for a global company to take, and it seems what Chase is doing is absolutely toxic. With this news spreading over social media, we wonder what Chase’s response will be.

Green Flags for Job Seekers

We love that more and more workplaces are having hard conversations around diversity, equity, and inclusion. If we are being honest, there just isn’t enough diversity in leadership in most companies.

This is why it is a major green flag if you find a company with diversity in leadership.

Why is this important? 👇

Diversity leadership means recognizing that cultural preferences differ and adapting strategies and processes that work for more group members. This also means having individuals from different backgrounds make up its workforce.

As we work towards a more inclusive global workforce, it is essential for job seekers to see people like them at the helm of affairs as it shows there’s also a chance to advance professionally at the right time and with the right skills.

While most companies believe ticking off that “diversity” box is enough, how can they declare real progress in their company DEI strategy if they can't point to equal representation at the top level by different categories of people?

The big categories are gender, race, and age, but the concept of diversity has now expanded to include religion, sexual orientation, economic background, political leanings, and so forth.

An example is Help Scout, which is committed to diversity and Inclusion (D&I), has gender parity, black and Latinx representation, and also women in leadership! You can read more about their continuous effort to D&I here which is one of the many reasons why they were our Distributed Company of last week!

Distributed Company of the Week

This week, we are giving MailerLite the shout-out as our Distributed Company of the Week.

We stan MailerLite for their people-first practices which include their transparent market-value pay range, 31 working days PTO, paternity and maternity leave, stipend for new parents, sick days off, creative days off, and a day off each month for parents with kids under 12!

There's also an annual joy budget, an anniversary trip and so much more. 😀 Don’t believe me? You can check the full list here.

Asides, from its lengthy (and juicy) list of benefits, MailerLite is diversified and is rated 4.9/5 by 34 past and current employees which is quite commendable. xx

FYI, MailerLite offers email marketing tools and website builders for businesses of all shapes and sizes.

Like we always say, it’s important to remember that no company is perfect, but we’re excited to highlight the companies we think are doing a great job at promoting good, global company values.

Distributed Tool of the Week

Spending a lot of time tapping at the computer screen isn't always the best for your brain, especially if you're a global worker.

This means you need help with reducing work stress, beating procrastination, helping positivity, restoring motivation, and managing your mental health in general which is where Moodfit, our Distributed Tool of the Week comes in!

Moodfit is a mental health app with a comprehensive set of customizable tools. Voted the best Mental Health App for three years in a row (2020, 2021, 2022), here's why we believe Moodfit will help you manage your work stress and mental health. 👇

• Mood Journal to help you learn and monitor what you're thinking and feeling

• Gratitude Journal to help you appreciate life's positives more than life's negatives

• Breathwork to help you calm your nervous system effectively

• Monitor your sleep, exercise, nutrition & more

Moodfit is a great and free tool that you can use on your mobile or PC. #wearedistributed highly recommends Moodfit as the best option for ensuring you spend enough time on proper self-care.

Global Employment Term of the Week

Ready to learn something new?

The global term of the week is The Great Resignation

This is the recent post-pandemic socio-economic trend involving a mass exodus of workers switching careers, leaving their jobs, deciding to be stay-at-home parents, retiring early, or otherwise adjusting their professional lives.

And that’s a wrap! We hope that you found this newsletter as informative to read as it was for us to write. Seriously, we couldn’t believe it when we learned about those practices at Chase.

With a new tool under your belt to help you live a more peaceful work/life balance, a new green flag to look for when applying, and 5 new global jobs to look into, we hope the rest of your week is productive, peaceful, and fulfilling.

Hunting for global roles in candidate-centric and people-first companies so you can live a happier life? Visit our global job board.

Know anyone who might enjoy reading this newsletter every week? Do not hesitate to share.

Is there anything you would like to see in future newsletters or do you have an idea for our future content series? Let us know in our Community Requests group. 🔥

About this newsletter…

#wearedistributed is a community-driven newsletter, sharing behind the scenes look at the future of work, through the lens of distributed workers. Not yet subscribed? No worries. You can check out the full archive, or sign up below: