Why you should be worried your boss is watching you

As more firms monitor office attendance, Charles Arthur investigates the growth in worker surveillance – and how AI will help companies keep an even closer eye on employees

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Some staff at the accountancy firm EY will have had an uncomfortable couple of days this week – especially if they weren’t in the office. Some of the senior partners are reportedly looking at data from the entry turnstiles, where employees have to swipe a card to gain entry, to monitor attendance at the UK offices. And they don’t like what they see: there aren’t enough people coming in to work.

Coming from one of the quartet of giant accountancy companies, such oversight might seem less Big Four than Big Brother. Although the Financial Times, which first reported the story, says that the partners are being shown “anonymised” turnstile data, the obvious implication is that if attendance doesn’t improve, the next step is to strip away the anonymity and start dropping much stronger hints about office attendance in accordance with their policy of at least two days WFO a week.

The big drive to get people back into the office is clearly in full swing – and companies like EY can use automation to begin to enforce it.

By contrast, in summer 2022, Jacob Rees-Mogg, as minister for Brexit opportunities and government efficiency, would rather inefficiently walk around civil service desks putting passiveaggressive notes on those of out-of-office staff saying: “I look forward to seeing you in the office very soon.”

But the reality is that whether we’ve been in or out of the office over the past few years, we have been monitored more and more. EY’s attendance surveillance looks relatively mild compared to some of the more aggressive stances that are being taken – and the possibilities being opened up, inevitably, by the application of AI-based machine learning systems to monitor what the troublesome humans are up to now.