Employers may think the pandemic is long behind them. It isn’t — not from a legal standpoint at least.
Its most enduring legacy is a transformed workplace, where privacy law is about to explode.
With hybrid work entrenched and employees scattered between boardrooms and bedrooms, many companies have turned to surveillance software — key-stroke loggers, screen trackers, and webcam monitoring — to keep tabs on productivity. Even some divisions of the federal government are now electronically tracking where their employees are during the workday.
It may seem harmless enough. But in law, it’s a potential powder keg.
Every week, I hear from employers frustrated that remote workers are less accountable, less productive or harder to supervise. Their instinct is to install digital oversight tools — a virtual version of walking the factory floor. Yet those same tools could land businesses before human rights tribunals, labour boards and the courts.
Canadian privacy law has lagged badly behind technological reality. For years, it focused on protecting consumers’ data. But now those statutes are colliding head-on with employers’ desire to monitor their own workforce. When those instincts meet, it’s usually the employer who loses.
Under Canadian law, workplace monitoring isn’t inherently unlawful. The test is whether the surveillance is reasonable, proportionate and transparent. That is where most employers fail.
An employer must have a legitimate business purpose — protecting...
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