New research shows that millions of American employers are using digital tracking tools to monitor and control their employees with increasing speed. This trend is expected to continue until at least 2025, with an estimated seven out of 10 American companies keeping digital records of their employees.
The study, conducted by the British designer of the StandoutCV online resume, compares monitoring trends after the pandemic in 2023 with the same statistics collected in 2021. It reveals that every third employer now has tools for tracking the exact location of their employees, which is 44.85% more than in the last two years.
After analyzing the 50 most popular monitoring tools for both years, the study also found that almost 25% of managers now have more aggressive tracking functions than in 2021. Monitoring tools have become more precise and functional since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, as remote work has become more prevalent.
Among the most popular functions of observation among employers are tracking working time (96%), taking screenshots of the employee’s computer screen (78%), video surveillance (42%), keystroke tracking (40%), GPS tracking (34%), and recording the sound of an employee through the internal microphone of the device (8%). It is noteworthy that 38% of the tools are used in a hidden mode without the knowledge of the employee, and over 80% of employees are supervised in real-time.
According to the study, at present, the use of tracking tools is indicated in the work conditions of 78% of cases. This means that monitoring tools can be installed differently for each employee and department or changed without warning, which can lead to discrimination at the workplace and suppress the activities of trade unions.
Employee monitoring has become a hot topic worldwide, with human rights activists arguing that invasive monitoring tools can violate the confidentiality and safety of workers, negatively affecting their mental and physical health.