Staff Surveillance In The New Age Of Agile Working

• Published date: 23 April 2021
• Subject Matter: Employment and HR, Coronavirus (COVID-19), Contract of Employment, Employee Rights/ Labour Relations, Employment and Workforce Wellbeing
• Law Firm: Trowers & Hamlins
• Author: Ms Rebecca McGuirk and Emma Burrows

As employers prepare for the lifting of work-from-home restrictions and an end to lockdown, it is rapidly becoming clear how much the world of work has transformed in the past 18 months.

While the transition to agile working was already underway in many companies and sectors of the economy, a more flexible approach to when, where and how tasks are completed is now being embraced by a far wider array of businesses.

At a recent Trowers & Hamlins webinar on the future of agile working, we asked the 250 people in attendance for their views on how the pandemic has shifted ways of working. We found a massive 95% of those present felt the majority of their staff will now split their time between home and the office. The change will be permanent in many cases: 49% of those polled said they were considering reducing office space, with 72% looking to redesign their space to better facilitate collaboration and flexibility.

There are many upsides from such a shift, with signs that a transition to agile working will make the workforce more inclusive. We found, for example, that 72% of those we polled had observed an increase in the number of applicants for new jobs applying from further away from the office, making the pool of potential employees much larger, and there was also an increase in applicants who were parents or carers.

At the same time, there are many new risks that employers need to consider when embracing remote working. In the face of concerns about cybersecurity, the protection of confidential information and drops in productivity, a growing number of employers have started to explore ways in which they might monitor staff while they are working at home, and a swathe of new technologies is being developed to keep track of homeworkers.

Rebecca McGuirk, partner in the employment team at Trowers, says: "Some employers have started to introduce technology that can monitor productivity and output when employees are working remotely. The problem is that there is a real nervousness that that's not really why it has been introduced, and instead of simply keeping track of the hours that people are putting in, it is being used to keep watch on exactly what they are doing."

Whether surveillance involves random spot checks on emails and internet browsing or stretches to more systematic observation through the recording of laptops, calls and keyboard use, it creates both employment contract and privacy law issues. It is now possible to invest in facial recognition...