Use monitoring tech only with employees’ consent, MPs say

Employers should only use technology to monitor employees with workers’ consent, according to a group of MPs recommending further research into the impact of automation and data collection at work. 

The Culture, Media and Sport Committee has also called on the government to do more to address skills shortages in the cybersecurity sector, and further develop its guidance on monitoring employees at work.

Its report “Connected tech: smart or sinister?” said that monitoring workers in workplaces should only be used with employees’ consent and following a consultation process.

The committee heard evidence from employers that had implemented technology in their workplaces that collects or reports on employees’ data.

Examples included activity trackers and smartphone apps to encourage workers to increase their physical activity, handheld devices to track the speed at which postal workers carry out deliveries, and robotics designed to reduce walking time and take repetitive tasks from warehouse workers.

Dr Matthew Cole, post-doctoral researcher at the Fairwork Project based at the Oxford Internet Institute, told the committee that time and movement tracking has led to workers feeling alienated and experiencing increased stress and anxiety.

He also raised concerns about the level of protection for workers offered by the UK’s data privacy regime: “GDPR provides a certain degree of protection for private individuals. However, it is more limited in protecting workers in the workplace. There are a few provisions there that specifically deal with subject access requests and protect workers against algorithmic decision making, like hiring and firing purely by algorithm, but there is a lack of enforcement.”

The committee’s report recommends that the government commissions research around the benefits and drawbacks of automated and data collection systems at work.

It should also clarify whether proposals for the regulation of AI will extend to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), it said, while the Information Commissioner’s Office should develop its existing draft guidance on Employment practices: monitoring at work into a “principles-based code” for designers and operators of workplace connected tech.

Responding to the report, Andrew Pakes, deputy general secretary of the Prospect union, said regulation of employee monitoring has lagged well behind the pace of tech implementation.

“These are important recommendations from the Culture, Media and Sport Committee report and would go some way to identifying the true scale of the issue, through government research, and catching up with the reality of worker surveillance. In particular, it is vital that workers are fully informed and involved in the design and use of monitoring software and what is being done with the data collected,” he said.

“It’s also important that any change or expansion of the role of HSE be matched with a significant funding boost to the agency which is already stretched to breaking point.”

The report suggests that skills shortages in the cybersecurity sector are likely to worsen. It calls on the government to support the availability of free courses across the country, encourage more professionals to become cybersecurity educators, improve the provision of core skills among the existing workforce, and to incentivise employers to improve hiring practices and retention rates.

“The government has estimated, based on qualitative and quantitative research undertaken by Ipsos, that the workforce gap in the cybersecurity workforce for 2022 was approximately 14,100 per year, up from the previous year’s estimate of approximately 10,000 by over 40%,” the report said.

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