How UK companies are tracking their employees

One of the "Big Four" accounting firms will start tracking where its UK employees are logging on from, in an attempt to keep a closer eye on hybrid working practices.

In a memo to its 26,000 UK employees, PwC said it will use geo-location technology to help formalise its "approach to working together in person", said CNN.

Writing for RTE, Professor Kevin Murphy said this is the "latest in a series of increasingly sinister salvos" as electronic surveillance becomes "increasingly widespread" in the workplace.

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How are companies tracking their staff?

Alongside the rise in remote work since the pandemic has come "a surge in workplace monitoring", said People Management, and it's thought that by next year 70% of large employers will be monitoring their employees. Monitoring office attendance is part of the motivation in some instances, but most companies that are implementing surveillance are doing so to "protect themselves from security risks".

Among the electronic tracking tools available are programs that allow bosses to see every keystroke typed on a worker's computer, and built-in video cameras which can record employees' behaviour and movements. Major employers in the US, including Starbucks, Walmart, and AstraZeneca have also used AI to "monitor and analyse messages sent between employees", said HR Grapevine. Although surveillance is "sometimes done openly and with the knowledge of employees", tracking might be "entirely covert in some organisations", Murphy wrote for RTE.

In January, a French court fined Amazon was fined €32 million (£27 million) over "excessive" surveillance of its workers. It found the retailing giant tracked employee behaviour using some measures found to be illegal by the data watchdog, including such intensive activity monitoring that workers could potentially be made to justify each break. Amazon insisted that the court's findings were "factually incorrect".

Is it legal?

In the UK, the rights and responsibilities of employers and employees are defined within the Employment Rights Act 1996 and the Data Protection Act 2018. Under that legislation, workplace surveillance measures must be proportionate and respectful of an individual's privacy. There are also strict guidelines on the processing and handling of personal data.

Staff members who feel their privacy rights have been "violated", or that their employer has acted in a manner that has undermined the employment relationship, "may raise court or tribunal proceedings against them", said People Management.

What's the reaction?

"People aren't robots," wrote Helen Coffey in The Independent, but companies are monitoring employees' performance "as if we were machines". Software that tracks when workers are at their desks is "like something out of a dystopian novel". That such methods have been "insidiously incorporated across sectors and industries" so rapidly is "bone-chilling, 'Black Mirror'-level stuff".

There are many reasons to be "concerned" about this trend, said Murphy, including that surveillance creates the "very real possibility of unwarranted invasions of privacy" and it can be a "significant source of stress for employees" and "a threat to their well-being and mental health".

The monitoring of employees' messaging also "results in a chilling effect on what people are saying in the workplace" more generally, technology policy expert Amba Kak told HR Grapevine. "These are as much worker rights issues as they are privacy issues."

There are calls for stronger regulation to protect workers. The Trades Union Congress has warned that "intrusive" surveillance tech risks "spiralling out of control" and the prospect of "delegating serious decisions to algorithms – such as recruitment, promotions and sometimes even sackings" is problematic.