Is it worth it? 'Bossware' can push workers to take risks: report

Monitoring technologies in the workplace can decrease workers’ risk of injuries, but when excessively used, can contribute to an increased injury risk and “greater fatigue among workers,” according to a report. 

The report, by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, found that organizational use of “bossware” and digital surveillance — such as cameras, microphones, software, and wearables — has expanded with the development of new technologies and increase in remote work. This has led to benefits such as improved safety for workers, particularly those performing physical tasks or working off-site, while allowing organizations to gather data on productivity and performance, according to the report. 

However, the report also found that digital surveillance can increase injury risks when focused on productivity targets by pushing workers to take risks or skip breaks, and it can negatively affect mental health by increasing anxiety and stress from being constantly monitored and feeling pushed to do more. 

So what does this mean for HR leaders when their organizations are assessing digital surveillance tools for their workforce? 

David Zweig, professor of organizational behaviour and HR management at the University of Toronto-Scarborough, believes that employee surveillance strategy has to start with intent, not technology. 

“I think the biggest question you need to ask is 'Why are we monitoring and what’s the purpose?'” he says. “If the purpose is to try and manage deviant behaviour, then the argument is why is there deviant behaviour? [It's about] looking at the underlying uses of some of the issues rather than resorting to monitoring, which can actually lead to even more deviant behaviour as people try and find ways to get out of the gaze of surveillance.” 

'Illusion of control' with monitoring  

When it comes to keeping track of remote employees, Zweig believes that many surveillance programs begin with a flawed assumption about remote and hybrid work and an “illusion of control that if we can’t see them, they must not be doing what we need them to be doing.” 

According to Zweig, that illusion often substitutes technology for basic management and glosses over building positive relationships or creating trust with employees. Using surveillance technology as such a shortcut can lead to issues noted in the report, which links continuous tracking and unclear purposes for the data use with higher stress, anxiety, and depression. 

“Often the consequences [of digital surveillance] are much worse than the kinds of behaviors the monitoring was supposed to stop,” says Zweig. 

Valerio De Stefano, a professor of law at Osgoode Hall Law School at York University, isn’t surprised by the report’s finding that electronic monitoring generates increased anxiety in workers and can be counterproductive if used excessively by an organization. 

“These systems are often non-transparent and they effectively outsource managerial tools — and sometimes managerial decision-making — to external elements and often third parties,” says de Stefano. 

Good digital surveillance begins with transparency 

The report highlights a clear link between transparency about the use of surveillance technology and employee well-being. Workers reported better outcomes when surveillance was clearly explained, aimed at safety, and limited in scope. Zweig sees openness as the minimum threshold for any monitoring initiative, noting that there are legal requirements to inform employees about it.

“It’s really important, if you’re going to use these tools, to make it very clear to employees what is being monitored, how it’s being monitored, and why it’s being monitored,” he says. “It’s really important to give people a sense that the information is going to be used appropriately and fairly, because if people don't think it's going to be used fairly, they’re going to respond in negative ways.” 

That transparency shouldn’t only be around the use of surveillance tools, but also the purpose and the limits, adds Zweig. “People should know what the scope is and what it’s going to be used for — is it going to be used to meet certain KPIs or performance metrics in a particular quarter, for example?” he says. 

De Stefano believes that there’s a transparency problem with the rollout of digital surveillance tools, as they’re often implemented without any meaningful feedback from staff. “Employees are usually the ones who best understand the jobs that need to be done, so the idea that their management should be outsourced to [digital tools and platforms] is something they might find frightening or frustrating,” he says. 

Surveillance changes behaviour — sometimes in wrong direction 

According to Zweig, one of the dangers of employee surveillance is that it can influence employee behaviour to the point where it affects not only employee mental health, but also their productivity. The study found that productivity-driven monitoring can lead to higher injury rates and fatigue for employees in physical jobs, and worsen physical and mental issues for all by pushing workers to skip breaks and feel more fatigued and overloaded. 

Zweig points to call centres as an example of surveillance and assessments based purely on the data. “If you’re monitoring call time, then you’re going to have employees picking up the phone with a customer and hanging up to reduce their call times, or whipping through a conversation without actually resolving the issue for customers in order to keep their call times down,” he says. 

The same logic applies when employers track websites or keystrokes, according to Zweig.

“If it’s monitoring what websites employees are going to, they’ll just have another device not connected to company systems that they’ll do those actions on,” he says. The study found that workers often take shortcuts, cutting breaks and seeking ways to avoid surveillance, with documented increases in fatigue, stress, and injuries. 

This is a predictable reaction to a perceived loss of autonomy, says Zweig. “People will find ways to evade the gaze of surveillance, so you’re bringing out a different set of deviant behaviors and you’re not encouraging the ones who actually lead to better performance, engagement, and all the good things that we want,” he says. 

Critical eye for scope, amount of surveillance 

The study also found that monitoring for performance sometimes ignored important offline or non-measurable tasks such as research, mentoring, relationship-building, and collaborative work, which might give an inaccurate view of a worker’s productivity, and surveillance data was sometimes used for a purpose different from that for which is was collected. Employees expressed concern about firing, benefits denial, or promotion decisions based on surveillance data that don’t show the entire story. 

“It’s possible that these systems could be unreliable for assessing performance and monitoring working activity,” says De Stefano. “Employees know this, and it makes them anxious about being managed and supervised by tools that are both unreliable and non-transparent... And if employees spend a big part of their time being anxious about surveillance or trying to understand what the surveillance systems value the most, trying to appease these systems is a waste of time for them and can cause a decline in productivity.” 

Zweig believes that HR needs to play a role in the decision-making before any surveillance tool is selected or implemented.

“One question HR should be asking is 'Why this is necessary and what’s the point?'” he says. “Because there’s evidence that using these technologies doesn’t actually enhance performance and, in many ways can increase the types of behaviors these tools are designed to prevent.” 

In situations where business leaders push for broad monitoring as a default response to hybrid work, Zweig sees a specific HR responsibility.

“I think HR should be questioning leaders who want to resort to this as a tool of management and question the basic understanding that leadership is all about control, and that using technology will relieve leaders of the responsibility of managing and establishing relationships where people feel that they're respected, they're trusted, and that they can do their work without concern that everything they're doing is being surveilled.” 

Instead, he argues for a people-centred strategy grounded in relationships and trust.

“If you can actually develop relationships with your employees that negate the need for surveillance, even if they’re remote, it often obviates the need for surveillance in the first place,” he says. “I think it’s really important for HR leaders to stress how critical it is to protect people’s privacy, be transparent around the uses of these technologies, and how decision-making should be made in as fair and transparent a way as possible if these technologies are going to be used.”