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On Monday, when Jive announced its sale, chief executive Elisa Steele warned employees to expect "a time of ambiguity."

(Oregonian file photo)

Jive Software's pending sale to a little-known Texas company is generating growing concern among Jive's Portland employees, who are worried the new owner will bring dramatic transformation to one of the city's most established technology businesses.

Employees have been particularly concerned about a productivity management tool called WorkSmart that the buyer, Aurea, uses at the other companies in its portfolio. WorkSmart can track workers' keystroke activity and take webcam images to ensure they're doing their jobs.

Those concerns prompted Aurea chief executive Scott Brighton to write to Jive employees Friday morning, four days after announcing the $462 million deal. Brighton sought to address those fears as well as uncertainty about the future of the company's Portland office.

Aurea hasn't decided whether to use WorkSmart at Jive, according to a copy of the message obtained by The Oregonian/OregonLive (and later filed with the SEC), in which Brighton suggested it doesn't currently use those individual tracking features in other parts of its business.

Aurea employees generally work from home, but Brighton said the company will retain a "physical space" in Portland and other sites where Jive has large number of employees. He promised to address Jive staff on Tuesday.

"The Aurea leadership team and I are going to be very thoughtful about the integration and how we approach each decision," Brighton wrote. "We are eager to learn about the business."

On Monday, when Jive announced its sale, chief executive Elisa Steele warned employees to expect "a time of ambiguity," at least until the deal closes next month. The Oregonian/OregonLive spoke to several current and former Jive employees, who say a lack of communication from Jive and Aurea has created a sense of foreboding at the company.

Portland tech professionals say they have had a flurry of LinkedIn connection requests from Jive staffers who appear to be exploring options at other potential employers.

Jive makes social networking tools to encourage collaboration within businesses. It was singularly influential in leading Oregon technology's shift away from hardware to a new generation of online technologies. Jive's headquarters are now in California, but its largest office remains in downtown Portland where it employs 200 or more.

In the years leading up to its sale, growth slowed and investors lost patience with years of losses. Still, Jive prided itself on a distinctive corporate culture that valued integrity and innovation and sought to portray itself as a key element of its employees' lives.

"To me, @JiveSoftware is more than software. And it's more than a place to work," one employee wrote on Twitter this week, in a message retweeted by Steele. "Jive helps me work as my best self."

It's not uncommon for companies to go quiet during the period between the announcement of a sale and closure of the transaction. Until the deal closes, Aurea doesn't own Jive and laws require the companies continue to operate separately.

Many companies take pains, though, to address potential concerns of their staff to ensure they stay on board through a deal. When Portland tech companies Simple and Elemental Technologies sold, for example, both emphasized immediately that the new owners planned to retain and invest in their local operations.

Some Jive employees say that commitment and communication has been lacking from Aurea, and that questions raised on the company's internal communications tools have gone unanswered.

Fears over Aurea hit overdrive this week when a Twitter post from a web developer outside the company stated - incorrectly - that Jive had notified employees that it would use the WorkSmart monitoring technology to track their keystroke activity and take webcam images of them working.

Jive employees say no such message went out. While WorkSmart has those capabilities, Brighton's note says currently Aurea uses other features instead. According to its last annual report, Aurea uses WorkSmart to gauge staff productivity.

"Every employee in the company is measured, relative to their peers in 'team rooms,' by a simple metric. We capture and monitor this information in a proprietary internal system called 'WorkSmart,'" Aurea wrote. "As we scale, we now get better - having more people in each team provides more potential for innovation. Additionally, greater differences between top performers and bottom performers drives meaningful team improvement."

WorkSmart is an employee management tool developed by Crossover, which also is owned by Aurea's corporate parent, ESW Capital.

Crossover chief executive Andy Tryba, a former director of corporate strategy at Intel, said Friday that WorkSmart's capabilities have been misunderstood. He describes it as being like a Fitbit for work, to help workers and their managers gauge whether they are using their time productively.

For example, he said, it can help workers track how much time they spend in meetings, or on specific kinds of tasks.

"Anything can be driven the wrong way. Therefore the managers have to be trained on this and how you can use this data in a collaborative manner," Tryba said.

"I don't think anybody should be nervous, any more nervous than having a Fitbit," Tryba said. "We find the best people, they want (to use) data to get better. They want to know where they're bleeding time."

It's increasingly common for employers to use technology to monitor worker behavior, according to David Caughlin, who teaches management at Portland State University. But he said invasive tools such as keystroke monitoring and webcams are more common in call centers, customer service jobs, and factories.

"This could fly in the face of occupational norms for people who work in professional positions such as engineers," Caughlin said. "Typically you are afforded more autonomy the higher up you are in the organization."

The ambiguity over WorkSmart could erode employees' trust in management, he said, especially if they feel they have no input in the decision on how managers monitor and evaluate their work.

"Taken together, a lack of transparency and voice can harm employees' perceptions of fairness, and the research generally shows that employees who perceive a lack of fairness tend to perform at a lower level and are more likely to quit," Caughlin said.

-- Mike Rogoway; twitter: @rogoway; 503-294-7699