Remote Team Management’s Dirty Secret: Surveillance Software Rising
The numbers are stark: 74% of US employers now use online tracking tools to monitor their workforce. If you're working from home, the odds are high that someone, or something, is watching you work.
This isn't hyperbole. Multiple studies confirm that workplace surveillance has exploded since the pandemic reshaped how we work. What began as a temporary solution to an unprecedented crisis has metastasized into a billion-dollar industry predicated on a troubling premise: employers don't trust their employees to work unsupervised.
The surveillance software market, valued at roughly $587 million in 2024, is projected to more than double to $1.4 billion by 2032. That's a 12.3% annual growth rate, faster than most sectors of the tech economy. Companies are voting with their wallets, and they're voting for more oversight, not less.
But here's what the vendors won't tell you in their polished sales presentations: this technology might be solving the wrong problem. And in the process, it's creating several new ones.
What They're Actually Tracking
Employee monitoring has evolved far beyond simple time-tracking software. Modern surveillance platforms offer a suite of features that would make an intelligence agency envious:
Screen recording and screenshots. Some systems capture your screen at regular intervals or record video of your entire workday. Others take periodic screenshots, sometimes without notification.
Keystroke logging. Every word you type can be recorded, ostensibly to measure productivity but also capturing passwords, personal messages, and anything else you enter on your keyboard.
Website and application tracking. Which sites you visit, which applications you use, and how long you spend in each. Some systems categorize this activity into "productive" and "unproductive" buckets using questionable algorithms.
Attention monitoring. Webcam-based systems that use AI to detect whether you're actually looking at your screen. Some track eye movement or measure "engagement" through facial recognition.
Mouse movement tracking. Yes, some employers track the distance your mouse travels and how frequently you move it, spawning an entire mini-industry of "mouse jigglers" designed to game the system.
Email and chat surveillance. Many platforms monitor internal communications, analyzing not just when you send messages but their content, tone, and sentiment.
The common thread? These tools measure activity, not outcomes. They confuse motion with progress, presence with productivity.
The Trust Tax
From a recruiting perspective, the rise of surveillance software represents a fundamental shift in the employer-employee relationship, and not for the better.
When I interview candidates, I'm often asked about company culture. It's code for: "Will this place treat me like an adult?" Candidates who've worked under heavy surveillance describe the experience in universally negative terms. They talk about feeling mistrusted, infantilized, and stressed. They describe "productivity theater" - spending energy appearing busy rather than actually working.
The data backs up these anecdotes. Research from the American Psychological Association found that 56% of monitored employees report feeling stressed or anxious, compared to 40% of unmonitored workers. That's not a rounding error. That's an increase in workplace stress attributable directly to surveillance.
An MIT study found that excessive surveillance leads directly to higher turnover rates. People leave not because of workload, but because they feel constantly judged. Among companies that have implemented device monitoring, roughly half report seeing increased employee turnover. They deployed surveillance to boost productivity and instead accelerated resignations.
This creates a perverse dynamic. Companies institute monitoring because they're worried about productivity in remote settings. The monitoring damages morale and trust. Morale and productivity decline. Turnover increases. The company concludes it needs even more monitoring to prevent the productivity loss it created through monitoring.
The Productivity Contradiction
Perhaps most damning: there's little evidence that surveillance actually improves productivity.
A Glassdoor survey found that 40% of workers say employer monitoring makes them less productive, not more. Microsoft research indicates that 85% of employees feel less trusted when monitored invasively, and engagement drops accordingly. Companies implementing these systems often see short-term gains (primarily from stressed employees overcompensating) followed by long-term declines as burnout and resentment accumulate.
The theory behind surveillance software seems logical: if we can see exactly what employees are doing, we can identify inefficiencies and optimize performance. But this assumes that work is a series of measurable, observable actions - an assembly line where more keystrokes and fewer breaks equal better output.
Knowledge work doesn't function this way. The marketing manager browsing Instagram might be researching influencers for a campaign. The engineer staring into space might be solving a complex architectural problem. The writer who seems to produce nothing for hours might be synthesizing research that leads to a breakthrough article.
These scenarios parallel what hiring managers actually look for in candidates - evidence of judgment, creativity, and problem-solving, not just compliance and activity. Yet surveillance systems, by design, cannot measure these qualities. They can only measure proxies, and often poor ones.
The Legal Quicksand
The legal landscape around employee monitoring is evolving rapidly, and not in employers' favor.
The EU's GDPR, California's CPRA, and similar regulations restrict how much employee data companies can collect and how they can use it. Several U.S. states now require explicit disclosure of monitoring practices. The EU AI Act imposes transparency requirements on AI-powered surveillance systems.
Companies that overstep face real consequences. In 2024, French regulators fined Amazon's European division €32 million for operating an intrusive employee monitoring system without proper consent. Denmark amended its surveillance laws to prohibit companies from using remote cameras for anything beyond security and crime prevention.
The trend is clear: regulators are increasingly skeptical of workplace surveillance, especially when it's invasive, hidden, or used punitively. Companies deploying these systems face mounting compliance risks, particularly if they operate across multiple jurisdictions with varying privacy laws.
What Job Seekers Need to Know
If you're job hunting, surveillance practices should factor into your evaluation of potential employers, and increasingly, they do.
In surveys, 63% of workers consider extensive monitoring technology a legitimate reason to quit a job. Among tech workers specifically, 46% say they'd resign if their employer started tracking keystrokes or taking screenshots. This isn't theoretical. People are voting with their feet.
During interviews, ask directly about monitoring practices. Good questions include:
"What tools or systems does the company use to measure productivity for remote workers?"
"Are employees notified about what data is collected and how it's used?"
"Can you describe how the company balances productivity tracking with employee privacy?"
Pay attention not just to the answer but to how it's delivered. Evasiveness or vague reassurances about "industry-standard practices" should raise red flags. Companies with reasonable, transparent approaches won't hesitate to explain them.
Also watch for cultural indicators during the interview process itself. Does the company fixate on hours worked or outcomes achieved? Do interviewers ask about your work habits and schedule in obsessive detail? Do they emphasize trust and autonomy, or control and accountability?
Just as recruiters search for specific signals in your application materials, you should look for signals about how companies view their employees. Heavy surveillance often correlates with micromanagement, poor leadership, and cultures of distrust. all of which make for miserable work environments.
The Management Failure
At its core, the surge in surveillance software represents a failure of management.
Good managers don't need keystroke logs to know whether their team members are productive. They set clear expectations, establish measurable outcomes, provide regular feedback, and build trust. They judge employees on results, not activity. They create environments where people want to do good work, not systems that force compliance through constant observation.
Bad managers, or insecure ones, gravitate toward surveillance because it provides the illusion of control. It transforms the messy, human challenge of leadership into a data dashboard. It replaces judgment with algorithms. It lets managers avoid difficult conversations by hiding behind metrics.
The problem is that surveillance solves none of the actual challenges of managing remote teams. It doesn't improve communication. It doesn't clarify expectations. It doesn't develop skills or address performance issues. It doesn't build the trust and psychological safety that enable teams to do their best work.
What it does do is signal to employees that leadership doesn't trust them to work without oversight. And once you send that signal, you've fundamentally altered the employment relationship. Trust, once broken, is extraordinarily difficult to rebuild.
The same principles that drive effective mentorship and talent development (trust, autonomy, and investment in people) are incompatible with pervasive surveillance. You can't develop leaders by treating them like suspects.
A Better Path Forward
Not all monitoring is created equal. There's a meaningful difference between:
Transparency vs. stealth. Openly explaining what data is collected and why, versus installing software covertly and hoping employees don't notice.
Activity vs. outcomes. Measuring hours logged and websites visited, versus assessing whether work products meet expectations and deadlines are met.
Invasive vs. respectful. Recording keystrokes and taking webcam screenshots, versus tracking high-level metrics like project completion rates.
Control vs. support. Using monitoring data to punish and micromanage, versus identifying patterns that might indicate burnout or resource constraints.
Some monitoring may be legitimate. Compliance-driven industries like finance need to retain communications for regulatory purposes. Security teams need to detect data breaches and insider threats. Companies reasonably want to ensure that expensive software licenses are being used.
But these legitimate use cases don't require, and aren't served by, the invasive, comprehensive surveillance that most modern platforms offer. You don't need to record every keystroke to comply with securities regulations. You don't need AI-powered attention tracking to prevent data theft.
The companies getting this right tend to share certain characteristics:
They monitor as little as necessary, collecting only data with clear, legitimate business purposes. They're transparent about what they collect and why. They focus on outcomes and results rather than activity and presence. They give employees access to their own data. They use monitoring to support and develop people, not to catch and punish them.
They also tend to have lower turnover, higher engagement, and yes, better productivity. Funny how that works.
The Recruiter's Take
Here's what I tell clients about surveillance software: if you're considering it, ask yourself why.
If the answer is "because I'm worried employees aren't working," you have a trust problem, not a technology problem. And you won't solve a trust problem with a surveillance solution - you'll only make it worse.
If you have specific employees whose performance concerns you, address that through normal management processes: clear feedback, performance improvement plans, and if necessary, termination. Don't deploy invasive monitoring across your entire workforce because you're worried about a few bad actors.
If you genuinely need monitoring for compliance or security reasons, implement the least invasive solution that meets your actual requirements. Be transparent about it. Involve employees in the process. Get their input. Respect their privacy.
And if you're convinced that you need comprehensive surveillance to manage your remote team effectively, consider the possibility that the problem isn't your employees - it's your managers.
The best workers want autonomy, trust, and to be judged on their results. They want to work for organizations that treat them as professionals capable of managing their own time and productivity. When you deploy surveillance software, you signal that you believe the opposite. You shouldn't be surprised when talented people conclude they'd rather work somewhere else.
Remote work isn't going away. The companies that figure out how to manage distributed teams without resorting to surveillance will have access to a larger, more talented labor pool than competitors who don't. In a tight labor market, that's a significant competitive advantage—one that's undermined by every keystroke logger and screenshot tool in your IT stack.
The dirty secret isn't that surveillance is rising. It's that it was never necessary in the first place.
Cole Sperry has been a recruiter and resume writer since 2015, working with tens of thousands of job seekers, and hundreds of employers. Today Cole runs a boutique advisory firm consulting with dozens of recruiting firms and is the Managing Editor at OptimCareers.com.
