Workplace Surveillance Can Lower Employee Performance
Monitoring tools often create unintended stress and low-quality data for business owners relying on digital activity tracking.
Updated on Oct. 15, 2026 in Remote Work
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Do you believe employers are justified in using digital surveillance to track your daily work activity?
Workplace surveillance technology, which tracks employee activity through electronic monitoring, has increasingly become a standard in many organizations. While companies implement these tools to quantify performance, they often create unintended operational friction and employee stress.
Why it matters
Management teams frequently deploy monitoring tools simply because the technology is available, often neglecting to define a clear strategic purpose for the data. This approach frequently yields poor insights while simultaneously eroding employee autonomy and privacy.
A 2023 study of more than 3,400 workers highlights the prevalence of monitoring, with many companies gathering data without specific strategic objectives. The extent to which this data is effectively used for performance evaluation remains unknown.
The players
University of St Andrews
An academic institution based in Scotland that researches organizational behavior and labor practices.
The details
Companies utilize electronic monitoring software to track user behavior, but this creates a cat-and-mouse dynamic where employees develop workarounds like keyboard-tapping tools to mimic activity. Because the data is often collected without a defined goal, businesses struggle to interpret findings, while the presence of the tools frequently reduces worker morale and perceived privacy.
Timeline
2023: Researchers conducted a study of more than 3,400 workers.
2025: The book Monitored at Work was published.
Market Landscape
The global variation in surveillance norms reflects a significant divergence from the European Union General Data Protection Regulation, which offers more robust privacy protections than the U.S. landscape. This creates uneven operating standards for international firms balancing local privacy compliance.
Business owners should audit whether their monitoring tools provide actionable performance insights or merely generate noise and employee distrust. When adopting such technology, ensure the objective is linked to specific output goals rather than simple behavioral observation.
The takeaway
The ubiquity of surveillance tools often leads to employees circumventing systems, turning data into an unreliable indicator of actual work performance. Monitor the ratio of true output to system-generated activity logs to identify if your tools are accurately measuring business value.
Further reading
For more on managing distributed teams, visit our Remote Work section.
Live Poll
Do you believe employers are justified in using digital surveillance to track your daily work activity?
