As more businesses begin to decide on their approach to a post-Covid world and determine whether they will be requesting all or some employees to return to the workplace,  some of those businesses that intend to make home-working a permanent feature going forwards are said to be considering the introduction of surveillance measures.

A report by a national paper this week revealed that employees at one of the UK's biggest call centre companies face the prospect of being monitored remotely using webcams. The report claims that the employees, who answer calls for major businesses and government departments, have been told that cameras will be installed on their work computer systems.   The software will periodically scan for breaches of work rules, and will be able to detect when employees are eating, looking at their phones or leaving their desks while working from home. The software will record a photo of the employee's workstation where it detects an infraction of workplace rules. Workers will need to log any breaks in an app, with an explanation of why the break was needed, to avoid breaches being reported.

Unsurprisingly, trade unions have been quick to speak out against the proposed measures but in a sign  perhaps of future battles ahead in respect of long-term homeworking some employers retort that the measures go no further than what takes place if the employees are working in the call-centre, with their team leaders able to observe their every move.   The particular business covered in the report also made the point that no employees were being forced to work from home, but where they choose to do so it was of utmost importance that they are able to meet normal levels of expectation and ensure that data is protected to a high standard.

The issue of data protection is also likely to be a key theme for businesses: whilst in the panicked days of reacting to Covid,  data protection might not have been the urgent priority,  the report also suggests that an increased number of data breaches and IT hacking have been as a result of employees working from insecure, home WiFi access points.   If employers are to permit homeworking,  the time may have come where they (and their insurers) will start demanding the equivalent levels of IT security to be in place at the employees' homes.  The cost of that is perhaps yet to be considered.