New Staff Monitoring at U of Edinburgh Rankles Some

The University of Edinburgh is putting in place new policies requiring all staff to report their locations to their managers “when officially at work, but not in their normal place of work” for a half day or longer, Times Higher Education reported.

The university said it has opted to apply the new reporting requirements -- which are a condition of work visas for employees from outside the European Union -- to all staff, regardless of their nationality, as a matter of fairness. But some have accused Edinburgh of overreach. “Rather than using the oppressive requirements to which the Home Office subjects a handful of valued colleagues to justify comprehensive micromanagement, we should use our position and power to challenge this xenophobia and treat everybody with greater trust,” one unidentified academic told Times Higher.