Employers have long used technology to monitor employees.
Before the introduction of punch clocks in the late 1880s, supervisors kept factory workforces in line. In the 1980s came databases, time-tracking software, and digital visualisations of employee activity.
But today’s employee surveillance tools are more powerful, more ubiquitous, and increasingly driven by deep data troves and AI. They track workers from home offices to client sites and more, raising significant moral, ethical, and legal questions for business leaders.
“Now, we have AI algorithms that will automatically collect data about the workforce in real time and continuously,” said Oliver Kayas, Ph.D., senior lecturer in digital business at Liverpool Business School, who has been studying employee surveillance for 20 years.
This new wave of management technology has been dubbed the age of “connected surveillance” by some. Various platforms can track not just the location and productivity of employees, but also the content and tone of their work communications, their posture and heart rate, and perhaps even their emotional wellbeing.
In some cases, AI algorithms are even being empowered to make decisions — in an “agentic” model — based on their findings.
“We see algorithms now collecting the data, analysing the data, evaluating it, making decisions about whether to, say, reward or punish an employee for failing or achieving expectations, and then actually implementing … that decision itself,” Kayas said. “So, surveillance systems now can completely remove humans from the loop.”
Academic research raises significant concerns about advancements in the technology, Kayas said, but also shows monitoring may encourage productivity and discourage theft and corruption.
Companies that embrace the technology must define their intentions, keep employees informed and involved, and navigate a fragmented and fast-changing regulatory environment, he and other experts said.
“We don’t need to avoid those questions,” said Dorota Swieboda, ACMA, CGMA, a finance leader with experience in presence-tracking and performance-tracking technology in the banking industry. “We need to spend time with [employees], have a conversation, and explain why we’re implementing such monitoring solutions.”
“AI is the future, but the true measure of its success will be how ethically and responsibly we use it,” said Puneet Muthreja, an India-based finance and strategy consultant. “It’s the beginning of something that’s going to stay with us, so as professionals we must ensure that AI is not only powerful, but also principled.”
How surveillance has expanded
In the late 20th century, monitoring tools usually measured the basics, such as hours worked, tasks completed, or compliance with rules about computer usage.
By the 2000s, software that captured keystrokes and images of users’ screens became widespread, allowing employers to monitor workers on a minute-to-minute basis. Other tools look for keyboard and mouse activity, ensuring that employees are at their computers during work hours, or they can track the apps and files that a user accesses. Those technologies are used widely today.
Today, about 74% of US employers use tracking tools to monitor employees, according to a recent survey by ExpressVPN of 1,500 employers.
The survey also found:
- 59% of respondents are monitoring employees’ screens in real time.
- 61% are using AI analytics to measure productivity.
- 67% are using biometric data to monitor behaviour and attendance.
The trend has been driven by not only increasingly affordable technology, but also by companies looking to track workforces in remote and global environments.
Not only are more companies using this technology, but they are also expanding the scope of data they collect. Specialised “smart badges” and other hardware can track location, interaction with others, and even biometrics. Webcams can see if you’re at your computer — and analyse your posture, too, Kayas said.
Meanwhile, the emergence of AI large language models has made it easier for companies to look for patterns and insights in reams of internal messages, not to mention employees’ social media activity.
Algorithms stitch all this information together into more detailed — or perhaps more intrusive — portraits of each employee. Employers might learn about everything from an employee’s likes and dislikes to the extent of their personal and professional social networks, their stress levels, and the likelihood they’ll burn out.
“Algorithmic surveillance systems are here to stay — but they’re problematic and they’re going to open a can of worms,” Kayas said.
Employee concerns
When companies open that can of worms, even the most well-intentioned surveillance system can draw intense backlash from workers.
A 2025 survey by CV builder service Zety found that 21% of employees believe monitoring is a violation of privacy, while 43% said it should depend on the role and industry. Another 36% said employers have the right to monitor employees.
The ExpressVPN survey found that a third of respondents constantly wonder if they’re “being watched”, while similar numbers felt pressure to work faster and not more thoughtfully.
A 2022 survey by Capterra found that some employees identified potential benefits to monitoring, such as ensuring overtime is paid and giving more insight into performance — but the majority expressed concerns about the invasion of privacy and the impact on trust, stress, and morale.
Even systems designed to protect workers can draw blowback. For example, Kayas said, one case study identified a company that installed smart cameras to look for workplace safety violations, such as workers without helmets.
The system gave audible warnings to correct the risky behaviour — seemingly a noble use of monitoring to keep workers safe, Kayas said. But employees resented the intrusion, and many went out of their way to intentionally trigger the system.
“What you find is employees absolutely detest it because they find it’s too personalised, it’s monitoring me personally and continuously,” he said.
Barclays also faced enormous blowback — and the threat of a big fine — after installing sensors to track staff members’ presence at their desks. The bank initially described the data as an anonymous way to measure office space usage but then reportedly started using it to track individual employees.
This kind of tracking can have serious consequences. “It can damage trust between employees, between teams, between employees and managers,” Kayas said. “It can have a whole host of negative implications if it’s perceived as overreaching or intrusive.”
Other risks and drawbacks
If employers launch surveillance systems without a clear focus, they run the risk of collecting information for its own sake, wasting money, aggrieving workers, and perhaps even running afoul of data protection laws.
Surveillance systems can also fall short in their primary purpose — improving performance. They can unintentionally drive unproductive behaviour, such as the use of mouse “jigglers” and other gamesmanship to beat the system.
Moreover, algorithms can make the wrong call, especially when they’re missing crucial information about employees.
“There have been cases where algorithms have identified an employee as underperforming and it proposes disciplinary action,” Kayas said. “It doesn’t have access to what you would call contextual data — like bereavement. The algorithm doesn’t see that. It sees ‘target not met’.”
Such issues may become more impactful if “agentic” AI is given more latitude to directly reward or penalise employees, he said.
“Providing that clarity of thought to your employees is important,” Muthreja added. “What is being monitored and what is not being monitored — that’s the thing that should be communicated.”
Fast-changing laws and regulations
The collection and use of employee data is covered by a host of laws and regulations, perhaps most notably the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Violating those rules — even unintentionally — can carry heavy consequences.
In 2020, Swedish clothing company H&M was fined €35 million for collecting excessive information about illnesses and other personal circumstances from employees who took PTO.
The monitoring was purportedly meant to track employees’ reasons for taking time off, but the company could not justify the level of information it collected. The situation was made worse when the information was exposed to the broader organisation.
In 2024, UK company Serco Leisure was ordered to stop using facial-recognition cameras and fingerprint scanners to track attendance. Authorities found the company had unlawfully processed the data of more than 2,000 employees.
“There are quite serious legal implications for companies — and a lot of it revolves around privacy and privacy violations,” Kayas said.
Tracking and complying with regulations may only grow more complex. While the EU has built and strengthened broad data privacy protections, other governments have moved much more slowly or may have few protections at all for workers.
But with more nuanced and contained applications, monitoring and surveillance may still achieve their goals without proving overly intrusive.
“If you dig a little deeper, there are actually positives that can come from workplace surveillance technologies,” Kayas said.
According to Kayas, several studies have found surveillance and monitoring systems can reduce the chances of bribery and corruption. In hospitals, they can cut down on the theft of medical supplies such as surgical gloves — a frequent problem. They also can reduce shirking responsibilities and absenteeism.
Swieboda said monitoring tools have made her teams more focused and productive.
“I find it’s really useful, myself,” she said. “It gives you the assessment of how much time is spent on each activity, and you can verify, is it value adding or not? It helps you to plan the work and manage your time effectively.”
Any new system, Muthreja and Swieboda said, should have a clear goal, such as spotting mistakes, tracking time spent on various activities, or encouraging office attendance (see the sidebar “Tips for Implementing Surveillance Technology” at the end of this article).
“The purpose must be clear,” Muthreja said. “Is it productivity improvement? Is it data security? Is it regulatory improvement? The purpose should be clear as to why are we accepting those technologies in the workplace.”
The most successful implementations, Kayas said, are done with care and consideration. Companies should involve employees from the outset, rather than simply subjecting them to surveillance.
“It can be quite useful to get employees, believe it or not, involved in the design of these systems,” he said. “If you involve them in the design, employees tend to be much more accepting.”
In the best cases, surveillance systems are not just tolerated but embraced by employees.
More than driving compliance, they can provide useful feedback: Are employees spending too much time on certain tasks? Can it suggest productivity improvements, or taking a break when stress levels are high?
“If it’s implemented in the right way, it can have quite positive effects where employees can take control,” Kayas said. The likelihood that a system will be accepted also hinges heavily, he said, on whether it is seen as excessively intrusive.
“For example, tracking computer login times, apps designed to track wellbeing, learning analytics, and opt-in location tracking for safety tend to be perceived as less intrusive and are more likely to be accepted, assuming the organisation is also clear about its purpose and transparent about its use,” Kayas said. “There are, of course, particular technologies whose very nature means they tend to be perceived as more invasive and are thus less likely to be accepted, eg, covert screen recording and personal social media monitoring.”
Keep ethics in mind
Kayas hopes that, ultimately, companies keep privacy and ethics top of mind as the next wave of monitoring technologies arrives. “I’d like to think we’ll see companies developing tools in … more ethical ways,” he said, “building surveillance systems with a kind of privacy-by-design.”
If those policies fail, employees may find themselves subjected to constant oversight — a relentless gaze that may prove counterproductive, leaving people little time and space for independent thought. “But with clear purpose, ethical design, and open communication, workplace surveillance could still serve the people it watches.”
“You can see where people are performing, over performing, or underperforming,” Swieboda said. “Help them grow within the organisation, and recognise their success.”
Tips for implementing surveillance technology
Companies often turn to surveillance technology to track and improve productivity and attendance, but it comes with the risk of employee backlash and regulatory violations. In deploying monitoring technology, the experts interviewed for this article and other sources suggest that companies should ensure:
- Information collected has a specific business purpose.
- Information is kept secure and private.
- Employees are informed of all forms of surveillance and monitoring, including the possibility of covert surveillance.
- All local rules and regulations for data privacy are respected.
- Employees are involved early in the process to improve transparency and acceptance.
- Surveillance tools are designed to minimize intrusiveness and with privacy as a goal.
Andrew Kenney is a freelance writer based in the US. To comment on this article or to suggest an idea for another article, contact Oliver Rowe at Oliver.Rowe@aicpa-cima.com.
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