'Potential harms' | Employee monitoring tech faces review amid privacy & wellbeing concerns

A consultation is examining whether existing protections provide sufficient transparency, accountability and worker involvement when monitoring systems are introduced.

The review, launched as part of the government’s Make Work Pay programme, covers digital activity monitoring, including keystroke logging and time spent on applications or websites; fingerprint and facial recognition systems; GPS tracking; health and physiological monitoring; always-on webcams and driver-facing cameras; and automated performance scoring.

It also considers systems used to allocate tasks and shifts or support decisions about promotion, disciplinary action, dismissal, redundancy and performance.

“For the purposes of this consultation, WMT (workplace monitoring technology) refers to digital tools used by employers to collect, track, analyse or make decisions based on information about workers and their activities,” the consultation document said.