レポート 2949

Technology enables employers to increasingly monitor their employees. This explainer by Alexandra Mateescu and Aiha Nguyen identifies four current trends in workplace monitoring and surveillance: prediction and flagging tools; biometrics and health data; remote monitoring and time-tracking; and gamification and algorithmic management.

Mateescu and Nguyen consider how each trend impacts workers and workplace dynamics. For instance, freelancers on Upwork can be tracked through their keystrokes, mouse clicks, and screenshots to measure work time for clients. Work that cannot be measured in this way (for example, group brainstorming or long-term planning) may be devalued or go uncompensated.

The authors observe that information asymmetries are deepening as the boundaries of workplace privacy are changing. Tracking metrics like health data, for instance, can make way for discrimination and raises concerns about consent. The type of data employers collect will determine which work is valued, how they evaluate performance, and how workers are classified and compensated.

Executive Summary

Algorithmic management is a diverse set of technological tools and techniques to remotely manage workforces, relying on data collection and surveillance of workers to enable automated or semi-automated decision-making. Many of the characteristics of algorithmic management—such as consumer-sourced rating systems and automated “nudges”—were developed by companies of the “sharing” or “gig” economy. These practices have spurred debates over employee classification, as “gig” economy companies classify workers as independent contractors even as they use technology to exert control over their workforces.

And algorithmic management is becoming more common in other work contexts beyond “gig” platforms. Within delivery and logistics, companies from UPS to Amazon to grocery chains are using automated systems to optimize delivery workers’ daily routes. Domestic workers and hotel housekeepers are increasingly remotely tracked and managed through software. In retail and service industries, automated scheduling is replacing managers’ discretion over employee schedules, while the work of evaluating employees is being transferred to consumer-sourced rating systems.

Adoption of these technologies is generating new challenges for workers’ rights in four broad areas:

• Surveillance and control: Technology-enabled surveillance can generate new speed and efficiency pressures for workers and may lock workers out from important aspects of decision making, such as being able to use personal discretion.
• Transparency: Algorithmic management can create power imbalances that may be difficult to challenge without access to how these systems work as well as the resources and expertise to adequately assess them.
• Bias and discrimination: If used to make decisions about workers, tools like consumer-sourced rating systems can introduce biased and discriminatory practices towards workers.
• Accountability: Algorithmic management can be used to distance companies from the effects of their business decisions, obscuring specific decisions made about how a system should function