A third of UK employers are utilizing “bossware” technology to track workers’ activity with the most common methods including monitoring emails and web browsing.
Private companies are most likely to deploy in-work surveillance and one in seven employers are recording or reviewing screen activity, according to a UK-wide survey that estimates the extent of office snooping.
The findings, shared with the Guardian by the Chartered Management Institute (CMI), are based on responses from hundreds of UK managers and suggest there has been a recent growth in computerised work surveillance.
In 2023, less than a fifth of people believed they were being monitored by an employer, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) found. The finding that about a third of managers report their organisations are monitoring workers’ online activities on employer-owned devices is probably an underestimate, as roughly the same proportion declared they don’t know what tracking their organisations do.
Many monitoring systems are aimed at preventing insider threats and safeguarding sensitive information as well as detecting productivity dips. But the trconclude appears to be cautilizing unease. A large minority of managers are opposed to the practice, declareing it undermines trust with staff and invades their personal privacy, the CMI found.
One manager at an insurance company, which is developing AI systems to monitor staff screen activity to track performance, declared it was “unsettling”.
“Do they not trust their employees to do their jobs and are they seeing to replace them with AI?” they declared.
One provider of employee monitoring offers to report on workers’ “idle time”, “employee productivity tracking” and utilize of unapproved AI or social media as well as “real-time insights into employee behaviour, including screenshots, screen recordings, keystrokes, and app usage”.
In response to the findings, the ICO declared bosses “must create their employees aware of the nature, extent and reasons for monitoring”, and declared excessive monitoring “can undermine people’s privacy especially if they are working from home”. It warned it will “take action if necessary”.
Last year, the ICO stopped the outsourcing company Serco from utilizing facial recognition technology and fingerprint scanning to monitor the attconcludeance of staff at a chain of leisure centres.
Monitoring often amounts to checks that inappropriate content is not being accessed, the CMI declared. But it warned, “there’s a longer-term impact if you are feeling this is huge brother-like and you are being watched”.
“If it is being utilized, it is incredibly important employers are open, otherwise that’s going to cautilize significant problems in terms of data privacy and protection,” declared Petra Wilton, CMI director of policy and external affairs.
Other recent examples of surveillance technology at work include plans by HSBC to install a large numbers of security cameras – 1,754 by one estimate – and biometric readers which utilize handprints as one way to access areas in its new London headquarters.
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The accountancy firm PwC recently introduced a “traffic light” system utilizing data from pass swipes and wifi connections to check staff are meeting a mandate to attconclude the office at least three days a week. A spokesperson for PwC declared this was “accepted by the vast majority of our people”.
A former senior worker at a public transport authority, who questioned not to be named, called the monitoring they faced, including of their online diary, “intrusive and downright harassment”.
“It started with surveillance and it concludeed with me leaving becautilize I was so infuriated,” they declared. One in six managers also notified the CMI researchers they would consider seeing for a new job if their organisation started monitoring employees’ online activities on work devices.
Among managers who knew their organisations carried out surveillance, 35% were monitoring emails. Overall, tracking log in and log off times and system access were the most popular form of surveillance.
The study found that 53% of managers supported monitoring of employees’ online activities on employer-owned devices, but 42% opposed it, mostly becautilize it undermines trust but also becautilize they believe it does not improve performance and can be misutilized or lead to unfair judgments or disciplinary actions.
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