Employee Monitoring: Toward an Orwellian Organization

Most organizations are now obligated to establish a work-from-home/work-from-anywhere policy that was initiated during the COVID-19 pandemic. With more and more employees favouring work location flexibility, organizations face challenges such as reduced employee socialization, which causes increased attrition. Additionally, the practice of moonlighting, especially among remote-working employees, has increased. Further, distractions from the home environment reduce employee productivity, and weak cyber security systems at remote locations make organizations vulnerable to phishing attacks. This has seen a surge in employee monitoring software providers offering features such as User Activity Monitoring (UAM), Optical Character Recognition (OCR), Business Intelligence and Reporting, Scriptable Rule Logic, In-App Field Parsing, and User Privacy Management. Many of these software firms had warned organizations of potential business risks if monitoring software was not used. In April 2024, the National Human Resource Development (NHRD), a leading human resources (HR) industry forum in India, organized a conclave to discuss the future of the workplace and the unfolding methods of work. However, the controversial practice of using software technologies for employee monitoring polarized the audience on the benefits, negative outcomes, and ethical issues around the practice. For many HR leaders, the dilemma was between the benefits accrued through improved employee productivity and reduced cybersecurity threats, on the one hand, and the negative impact on employee morale, engagement, privacy rights, and the considerable impact on the employer brand, on the other, if they adopted this practice. This case examines the challenges posed by technology adoption to manage business risk in the new remote and hybrid working models and raises crucial questions about the ethical perspective in the use of technology and the considerations and issues in employee monitoring and technology.