However, that everyday, low-key tracking has now been killed by the pandemic.

In fact, Bradshaw says that managing a team in a workplace, checking in on colleagues and their progress once in a while, is a form of healthy monitoring in itself – it’s core to a functioning business. And in some modern day industries, employee monitoring is simply non-negotiable: from meeting financial compliance regulations to recording CCTV on shop floors. It’s been around for centuries – ever since bosses first supervised workers on the factory floor. But with many working more flexible hours as a result of coronavirus, the question becomes when does the employer’s right to track you actually end?” “It only works with pervasive surveillance and data collection. Alexandra Mateescu, of technology think tank Data & Society, believes such monitoring could grow given the increasingly unstable boundary between office and home. In February, Barclays scrapped tracking software which sent automated warnings to workers for spending too long on breaks.

Instead, workplace surveillance is fast becoming automated. Although marketed as productivity software, the technology – dubbed as ‘bossware’ for its secrecy and invasiveness – has led to many workers finding creative ways of evading its omniscient gaze. Once installed, they offer an array of covert monitoring tools, with managers able to view screenshots, login times and keystrokes at will to ensure employees remain on track working remotely. “We suspected as much, but the software allowed us to provide evidence for that person's dismissal.”Īs coronavirus lays waste to workplaces around the world, surveillance software has flourished: programs such as ActivTrak, Time Doctor, Teramind and Hubstaff have all reported a post-lockdown sales surge. In one case, we discovered an employee who, while ‘working from home,’ logged in at 9am, wrote one email, then another at 5pm, and did nothing in between.” He explains that he was delegated the task of “auditing” the employee’s logins. “We just use it to make sure people are doing their jobs. During the pandemic, he’s been tasked with snooping on errant employees via monitoring technology. Robert* works at a medium-sized tech firm in the US.

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