Your boss has never had more ways to peer over your shoulder.
It’s not new for bosses to watch workers, of course — especially on corporate devices. But technology updates that let employers better monitor whether you’re in the office, or view texts on employer-owned devices, are giving employers even more control.
Employer surveillance has grown because of the rise of remote work, and because of a proliferation of tools that allow for monitoring, a recent report from the US Government Accountability Office found.
Now, not only has tech improved, say workplace observers, so has the power of many employers over their workers.
Discussions over worker monitoring are “one of the pieces on the chessboard” in negotiations between employers and employees, said Ben Zhao, a computer science professor at the University of Chicago.
It’s a reversal of a pandemic-era power shift that briefly favored workers on issues such as more flexible hours or remote work. As the job market cools, bosses monitoring workers’ logins more closely, for example, is a way to “get some of that power back,” he said.
Zhao, who has focused on information security and privacy issues for several decades, said employers also realize that workers have many ways to go outside a company’s walls — from unsanctioned AI tools to online chat platforms — to find and share information. That can create security and legal headaches.
Some back-and-forth between workers and employers over what information bosses have access to is normal, he said, but there’s a risk when it’s not disclosed.
What employers can track
New technology can give employers more opportunities to monitor employee activities, if they so choose. A recent update at Google, for instance, adds to the capabilities that companies have for archiving text messages on employer-owned Android phones.
At Microsoft, a coming change to its Teams messaging tool will automatically update your work location when you connect to your employer’s WiFi.
With both features, employers would have to switch on those options.
A Google spokesperson told Business Insider that the Android update is an optional feature for work phones in “regulated industries” where employers spell out that they’re required to archive communications.
“This update simply allows organizations to support modern messaging — giving employees messaging benefits like high-quality media sharing and typing indicators — while maintaining the same compliance standards that already apply to SMS messaging,” the spokesperson wrote.
The forthcoming Microsoft feature, which allows Teams to identify which company building workers are in based on their WiFi connection, is “intended to help employees coordinate in-person work more smoothly with their teams,” a spokesperson said in an email to Business Insider.
“It is not a monitoring tool and we do not support employee surveillance in any way,” the spokesperson wrote.
Companies are stepping up monitoring
According to the US Government Accountability Office, workers tend to be in favor of monitoring if it’s intended to protect their safety, and often are opposed if it’s intended to track productivity.
Earlier this year, AT&T reduced the use of an attendance-tracking system that had frustrated some employees due to inaccuracies in tallying when people were in the office.
The shift highlights tensions that can emerge in the workplace over tracking efforts.
“Any workplace surveillance should have strict limitations on its use,” said William Budington, senior staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a group advocating for digital rights. That might include not using the technology outside the workplace or beyond work hours, he said.
Another risk, Budington said, is that workers can easily forget they’re carrying a company-issued device. Workers might text a friend, check medical information, or go on social media — even though employers could have full access to communications and location data.
It’s not, Budington said, “a scary ankle monitor that you are forced to wear.” Yet it can amount to the same thing if workers carry their company phone with them outside the office, he said.
When it’s your device
The most legally and ethically fraught issue isn’t what employers can do with the phones and laptops they hand workers; it’s what bosses might extract from personal equipment that workers use for their jobs.
One benefit of improved technology is that IT departments can often remove work-related information from a worker’s personal phone without wiping the entire device as they might have been forced to in the past, said Vanessa Matsis-McCready, VP of HR services and associate general counsel at Engage PEO, which provides HR services.
She said that while employers often have policies for devices that access their networks, intercepting workers’ personal information can cause hassles for employers.
“A lot of companies want to do the right thing,” Matsis-McCready said. “They don’t want to know all this information either, because if they have it, then they have to keep it safe.”
With company-owned devices, employers have access to any personal information you put into them, she said.
Where it gets tricky, Matsis-McCready said, is when an employer is tracking a personal device and a worker might be talking with a headhunter, going on a personal trip, or heading to a doctor’s appointment.
Ultimately, she said, workers who have questions about what their employers might be monitoring should ask.
“I don’t think a person should ever feel powerless,” Matsis-McCready said.
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