employees, it was implementing more
CCTV cameras. Anteby’s study, which
was funded by Boston University in
collaboration with airport security
staff, ended at about this time, but
he suggests the employees had devel-
oped a skillset that would continue
to keep them under the radar. Anteby
concluded, “The airport management
was surprised by our findings, it was
trying to improve the workplace.”
Coercive surveillance can also be
seen in police departments, where
individual officers feel surveillance
by senior officers is about identify-
ing misbehavior, rather than devel-
oping better officers. These types of
surveillance can be clearly described,
but the reality is that technologi-
cal development has made surveil-
lance prevalent in the workplace, yet
sometimes covert. There are plenty of
surveillance software vendors in the
market that can provide the technol-
ogy to monitor employee activity and
communication, including Internet
and app usage, email, messaging,
computer screen recording, captur-
ing key strokes (or the lack of them),
telephone use, video and audio, loca-
tion tracking with access cards, and
vehicle tracking using the global po-
sitioning system (GPS).

For employers, surveillance can help firms with everything from the elimination of time-wasting practices and the setting of salaries appropriately to the protection of intellectual property and ensuring the company has the right tools and equipment in place to optimize employee performance and productivity. Surveillance can also provide information about specific employees, which is where the point of contention often lies.

With so much technology installed
in business and industry, employees
may not be aware that they are being
tracked, perhaps through the use of
electronic keycards to access eleva-
tors or offices on a particular floor, or
a closed-circuit video system mount-
ed in an office garage to identify the
license plates of employee vehicles to
allow for secure entry and exit. While
these devices are usually installed for
security purposes, they can be used
equally well to track when staff ar-
rive at, and leave, the office—covert
surveillance, even it not intended
as such, that will only come to light
when management questions em-
ployee behavior.

Even if employees are aware they are being monitored, surveillance can damage morale, cause stress, and raise questions about privacy. According to Kate Bischoff, an employment attorney and human resources consultant as well as a senior certified professional of the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), the consequence of lower morale, higher stress, and less privacy is poor retention. Higher turnover is also bad for morale, thus amplifying the issue, as well as being costly and time-consuming for employers, who then must go through the laborious processes of hiring and training new employees.

So, where can the line be drawn between what Anteby calls coercive and caring surveillance? How can employees push back against employer surveillance schemes, and what are the legal parameters? These questions do not have precise, single answers and depend on circumstances.

Anteby suggests the line between coercive and caring surveillance does not depend on types of jobs, but rather on the way surveillance is carried out. He describes coercive systems as those that seek to catch employees when they don’t follow the rules. Caring systems he describes as those that provide developmental coaching to employees on how they can improve their skills.

If an employee contract includes
acceptance of a certain level of sur-
veillance, a fairly clear line can be
drawn; otherwise, when employer sur-
veillance becomes employee abuse
is a moving target. While unionized
employees have more push-back than
others against employers with the po-
tential to strike, this will always lead
to uncertain, and sometimes detri-
mental, outcomes.
The law provides little more cer-
tainty. In the U.S., federal law gen-
erally gives employers the right to
monitor employees as they perform
their work, but probably not to moni-
tor them in private areas such as
bathrooms and locker rooms, while
state law takes a more consensual
approach. Similarly, the U.K. offers
guidelines rather than prescriptive
measures. Minal Backhouse, manag-
ing director of Backhouse Solicitors,
an Essex, U.K.-based specialist in
employee law, says, “Monitoring em-
ployees is an accepted and useful tool
in a well-run business. But to stay on
the right side of the law, proper doc-
umentation should explain what is
being monitored and why, and trust
should be maintained through clear
communication with employees.”
Albert Gidari, director of privacy at
the Center for Internet and Society at
Stanford University Law School, de-
scribes today’s levels of surveillance as
“a technology story of normalization
of invasiveness into people’s private
lives,” and argues that there is a trade-
off between surveillance and life im-
provements such as improved commu-
nication and sharing of information.
Noting the use of the instant mes-
saging service Slack, he says that in
the U.S., the use of Slack is not seen
as an invasion of privacy, but instead
as a workplace enhancement. Anteby
also mentions the use of shared work-
place tools such as Slack, but notes
that employees, particularly senior
employees, often communicate out-
side Slack using text or phone to avoid
some of their messages being open to
monitoring by other staff.
Outside the office, tracking and
surveillance have a long history in the
transport and trucking industry. The
UPS parcel delivery service, by way of
example, uses computer analytics to
monitor its delivery drivers and pro-
vide guidance on how to avoid wast-
ing time and fuel on their routes.
Even if employees
are aware they are
being monitored,
surveillance can
damage morale,
cause stress,
and raise questions
about privacy.