As workplace surveillance grows, experts say it’s good to know the ways your employer is watching

As surveillance in the workplace expands, experts warn that employees need to be aware of the various methods their employers use to monitor them. College administrators scrutinized an adjunct professor's comments to students on personal essays, while a pharmacist was instructed to spend less time with patients after managers monitored the frequency and duration of her appointments. Warehouse scanners tracked the speed of workers to ensure they inspected hundreds of items per hour.

Thousands of employers employ technology to monitor the location, productivity, and communication of workers, a trend that gained momentum during the COVID-19 pandemic. A plethora of digital tools are utilized to track locations, collect data on task completion, and access work-issued device cameras, raising concerns about the erosion of employee privacy, even in personal spaces.

Employers have long kept tabs on workers, but recent advancements in artificial intelligence and data science allow them to compile extensive data sets, or "dossiers," which can be used to penalize employees or attempt to predict their behavior, according to Wilneida Negrón, director of research and policy at Coworker, a nonprofit that empowers workers to organize for better working conditions.

Negrón notes that workers with the least power in the job market often become guinea pigs for intrusive data collection methods. Common workplace monitoring programs have inadvertently shared employees' names, email addresses, and other personal information with hundreds of external data brokers and technology companies, often without clearly informing the workers of this practice.

Data privacy experts and monitored workers shared their concerns with The Associated Press regarding the risks of employer surveillance and suggested steps employees can take to safeguard their personal information.