I’m all eyes: the rise of workplace surveillance

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In 1783, the Bank of England appointed a committee to interview employees about the nature of their work, with the aim of understanding more about working practices and identifying failings.

One of the most interesting findings was the extent to which the clerks’ working lives were determined by the clock – with a time appointed for their arrival and departure, and attendance books ensuring their compliance.

Since the Industrial Revolution, businesses have used methods – such as clocking-in machines – to monitor their employees’ efficiency and punctuality. Today, however, companies can monitor staff in far greater depth, using technology and automation to track everything from how often a worker takes a toilet break, to what websites they visit and who they are emailing. Workplace surveillance has moved beyond timesheets and become more sophisticated, giving employers valuable insights on staff performance, loyalty and wellbeing.

For example, IBM chief executive Ginni Rometty recently said the company can use artificial intelligence (AI) to predict, with 95% accuracy, which employees are planning to quit their jobs. Meanwhile, Isaak – an artificial intelligence system developed by Status Today – can analyse email data to allow companies to detect whether an employee is overworked, compare wellbeing by team, and assess whether workers are collaborating effectively.

At the more extreme end of the scale, Amazon has patented a wristband to track warehouse workers’ movements, and Swedish start-up Epicenter offers its workers the chance to have a microchip implanted into their hand, allowing them to open doors and operate printers without key cards or employee badges. Although the Epicenter chips don’t allow for monitoring, it’s an interesting – if somewhat dystopian – glimpse into how ‘bio-hacking’ could be applied in future workplaces. Biohax, the company that supplies the chips, is said to be in talks with UK legal and financial firms to implant their staff.

Since the financial crisis, the UK’s labour productivity growth has been lower than at any time in the 20th century, and one of the main reasons is below-average management practices, according to the CBI. Could workplace monitoring play a role in improving people management?

Research by Britain Thinks for the Trades Union Congress (TUC) found that the most common forms of surveillance are: monitoring employees’ work emails, files and browsing histories; CCTV; and logging and recording phone calls. According to the study, the clearest potential benefit of being monitored, from a worker’s perspective, is that it can offer a more objective record – in theory, those who work harder should be able to show clear evidence of this to circumvent potentially biased opinions of a manager. On the other hand, this could be outweighed by employees feeling undermined.

Max Templer, research lead at Britain Thinks, says: “Introducing these kinds of monitoring technologies is often taken as a signal that employers don’t trust their employees to do their job without someone – or some software – peering over their shoulder. This leads to the question of whether monitoring employees to this extent is worth it, compared to the risk of harming staff morale.”

Matthew Chatterton, research director at Ipsos Mori, points to the “social contract” between employer and employee, as well as the risk that using technology to precisely assess performance could result in modifying employee behaviour in unintended ways. “This could be particularly problematic where managers want employees to collaborate freely, using their initiative to solve problems,” he says. “How do we know that ‘downtime’ is not actually creative thinking time, talking to colleagues?”

Workplace monitoring technologies are part of a broader increase in using automation to inform, and even outsource, decision-making across various parts of society. Placing too much faith in data, however – in the context of work – could result in human values such as creativity being eroded. Chatterton says: “There is an assumption that we can break down human behaviour in a mechanical way. That seems to lose something fundamental about the value of having people. It is especially challenging in customer service scenarios, as customers place a lot of value on interacting with humans rather than machine agents.”

There’s also the elephant in the room – privacy. While the more advanced means of tracking workers – such as facial coding and wearables – are far from widespread, 79% of workers surveyed for the Britain Thinks research thought employers should be legally required to consult and agree with workers on new forms of monitoring. Introducing more sophisticated methods raises the question of how much surveillance is acceptable, and who sets the parameters. In the delicate power balance of the employer-employee relationship, can workers truly consent to being monitored if they feel they have no other choice?

Smarter use of space

Monitoring is being used not only to understand more about people in the workplace, but also more about the space itself. Space use has been considered by companies such as EY, while co-working company WeWork uses data insights to help its clients optimise how they use their spaces. Approaches include data from thermal detection or motion sensors, analysing meeting room bookings, and employee surveys – but WeWork says it doesn’t monitor people and uses insights at an aggregate level.

Gathering workplace data could bolster an organisation’s insights in addition to findings from traditional employee research programmes. “Real behavioural data could clarify the reality of what employees are doing in specific situations, helping dispel myths and received wisdom,” says Ipsos Mori’s Chatterton.

However, monitoring workers alone is limited in how far it can go and doesn’t identify the drivers of behaviour, says Andrew Greenberg, chief executive at Greenberg Strategy. Companies that fail to take a longer view also risk losing sight of their overall cultural wellbeing, he adds. “The major drawback is not understanding the root of the problem. People are complex beings, and there is no ‘one size fits all’ way of approaching issues with a workforce.”

This article was first published in the July issue of Impact.