A report commissioned by the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario (IPC) discusses current workplace surveillance and monitoring technologies, goes into research about the impacts on employees, and addresses the legal frameworks governing employee privacy in different jurisdictions.
Surveillance in the modern workplace involves management’s real-time monitoring, recording, and tracking of employee performance, behaviours, and personal characteristics, the report said. This surveillance may entail monitoring the productivity of workers, tracking their online or device activity, imposing drug tests, or using hiring algorithms for recruitment, the report explained.
According to the report, as a managerial technique, workplace surveillance can help business owners and managers notice deviations from performance and behavioral standards and can make work processes visible to them. The report noted possible benefits in the areas of safety, training, policy compliance, and cybersecurity.
However, surveillance in the digital workplace also comes with potential concerns in the realms of privacy, autonomy, and human rights, the report said.
The report defined scientific management or Taylorism as an Industrial Revolution-era strategy that aims to break down work processes into smaller parts that would enable management to more closely monitor, analyze, and control workers. This managerial technique seeks to maximize efficiency and to get the greatest value from labour processes, the report explained.
Scientific management – when combined with digital surveillance tools, algorithms, and AI in the current technological environment – enables business owners to amplify their data collection and to automate management, the report said.
The report noted that this approach could potentially allow management to go beyond the workplace, blur work-life boundaries, and invade into the private lives of employees, with negative implications to workers’ privacy, well-being, discretion, autonomy, and human rights.
Topics in report
This new report is divided into five parts. First, the report provides an overview of the current workplace surveillance technologies that allow for a continuous monitoring of worker location, activity, biometrics, and emotions even beyond the workplace.
The report goes into the capabilities of each technology or system, the scope of information that it can access, the possible legal implications that arise in light of the information collected, and the vendors or providers of that technology or system.
Second, the report explores the widespread integration of workplace surveillance and automated management across different sectors and industries, including retail, manufacturing, healthcare, warehousing, delivery, and transportation.
The report looks into the various kinds of technologies used, the reasoning behind such use, the unique context of each work environment, and the privacy considerations potentially involved in each setting.
Third, the report gives an overview of peer-reviewed research relating to the effects and dangers of workplace surveillance and automated management on employees, including in terms of their mental health and well-being, autonomy, dignity, and human rights.
Fourth, the report goes over these four trends in workplace surveillance and automated management with possible impacts on privacy rights:
- the datafication of organizations and employee visibility
- the intensification of automated or algorithmic management
- the use of wearable devices and biometric technologies in the workplace
- the use of employee monitoring applications in office and administrative settings
Lastly, the report identifies the attributes needed for a robust model safeguarding worker rights in the digital workplace. To reach this conclusion, the report reviews the laws applicable to workplace surveillance and employee privacy in Canada, including:
- the proposed Bill C-27 (An Act to enact the Consumer Privacy Protection Act, the Personal Information and Data Protection Tribunal Act and the Artificial Intelligence and Data Act and to make consequential and related amendments to other Acts)
- the federal Privacy Act and Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA)
- provincial laws in BC, Alberta, Quebec, and Ontario
The report also discusses privacy laws in a few other jurisdictions, such as those in California, Illinois, and New York in the US; the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the UK; and the European Union’s Artificial Intelligence Act and Platform Work Directive.
The IPC commissioned Adam Molnar, assistant professor for sociology and legal studies at the University of Waterloo, for this research report titled “Surveillance and Algorithmic Management at Work: Capabilities, Trends, and Legal Implications.”