Workplace tech embraced in COVID era likely to remain

During the pandemic, labor and employment experts have seen two trends emerge in parallel. The first concerns white collar workforces, many of which transitioned to remote work for the first time last year. Their employers, scrambling to equip this new work model with the safeguards of the old, began looking for tools that could secure company data, accurately track hours worked, and monitor worker productivity. The second trend concerns workforces that continued working on site. Their employers sought out new tools, too, but these tools were built to collect biometric data -- like the body temperature of their workers -- and detect the presence of COVID-19 in the workplace.

As workers across the nation continue to receive COVID-19 vaccinations and businesses continue to reopen, a new trend may be emerging: the development and adoption of workplace tools that build upon the tools meant for the pandemic, so that certain workplace procedures that became convention over the past year can persist after COVID-19 stops being a threat.

When white collar workers began transitioning to a remote work model last year, the technological tools their employers typically sought for the transition included those that increased cybersecurity and enabled timekeeping and worker monitoring, said Usama Kahf, a partner at Fisher & Phillips LLP who represents employers in workplace privacy matters. While many employers used tools for cybersecurity, timekeeping, and monitoring long before the pandemic, the problems they are meant to guard against -- data theft, malware, wage and hour claims, and workers not being productive or engaging in misconduct -- were heightened during the pandemic, when employers were no longer in the same physical space as their workers, Kahf said.

The attorney said monitoring tools have become especially important, and said many employers install surveillance software on company devices, and are more likely to do so if their employees are working with sensitive information. Kahf offered an anecdote about a client, who was able to see, in real time, the computer activity of their employees. One employee "was attempting to remove data from the computer, and you could see him ... try to upload it to Google Drive and connect a USB device," Kahf said. "This is how you can prevent the theft of intellectual property. If you have someone watching this stuff, then you could literally pick up the phone and say, 'Hey Joe, what are you doing? Can you just stop?'"

Esra A. Hudson, who represents employers and is the leader of the employment and labor practice at Manatt, Phelps & Phillips LLP, said she's also seen more employers using timekeeping and monitoring tools for remote workforces. Another trend she saw was the increased use of artificial intelligence, particularly to screen job candidates. "I do think AI and things along those lines are increasing because of the pandemic," Hudson said. "You have less opportunity to interview people in person and to get together and talk about candidates, and some of these AI programs have chat bots that send out questions to people to make some preliminary determinations."

If technological tools that monitor worker activity and productivity are relatively new to many white collar workforces, they have long been a fixture in workspaces like warehouses, said Michelle Miller, co-founder and co-executive director of worker advocacy group Coworker.org. What changed for many workers who weren't able to work remotely during the pandemic was the introduction of new contact tracing and biometric tools, designed to collect data about workers' bodies and assess whether they were infected with COVID-19.

Thermal imaging devices are the most conspicuous examples, Miller said, but she expressed skepticism that these devices always functioned the way they are supposed to. "We have heard from some workers that the cameras never register a temperature above like 99 degrees," Miller said, adding this suggests "it's not even particularly functional technology. So you now have these cameras installed in people's workplaces, they're taking biometric data from them and their body temperature, and they are capturing their faces every time they walk in and out of their workplaces."

Some employers will likely continue using these technologies after the pandemic is over. Kahf said he recently spoke to a client's security chief, who is planning to start using the type of tool Miller referenced -- a thermal imaging device combined with a facial recognition component, produced by security company Lenel. The reason his client wanted to use this tool, Kahf said, was not for COVID-19 safety reasons, but rather to bolster security in their manufacturing facilities: the data collected from the tool is fed back into a database, and allows the company to "know where you are at all times," Kahf said, adding the system is meant to prevent intruders from being allowed into the facilities.

"Employers and companies are trying to integrate their systems," Kahf said. While employers were previously using separate tools for things like timekeeping, employee monitoring, and symptom checks, there is a growing demand for "one platform, one software, one system that... just allows you to track and keep all that information and maintain it appropriately," he said. "You go to the time clock and you punch in to confirm your identity. It maybe scans your finger and scans your face, or you have to put in an ID number... then the next thing will be in the same platform will ask if you have COVID-19 symptoms today... At the same time there's a temperature scan."

Miller agreed many pandemic tools will likely continue to be a part of workspaces in the long run. But she is less convinced the tools are all necessary, and suggested the data they collected on workers could be used to infringe on workers' rights. The tools that include surveillance components could, for example, make it much harder for workers to organize, she said.

"We know that stuff doesn't leave once it's there," she said. "That stuff is going to stay -- the same way TSA is part of the airport."