The debate over workplace surveillance has resurfaced after reports that Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) was using a 'Digital User Experience Monitoring' tool on company-issued laptops. TCS denied the allegations, describing reports that it tracks individual employee activity as baseless and inaccurate, and said its tools are intended to monitor broader network performance, security, availability and employee digital experience.
The episode, however, raises a broader question for India's increasingly digital workplace: how much visibility can an employer legitimately have into an employee's activity on a company-issued device?Indian law does not currently have one comprehensive statute spelling out what employers can and cannot monitor. The legal position instead emerges from data-protection law, the Information Technology (IT) Act, employment contracts and workplace policies, and the Supreme Court's privacy jurisprudence.
As organisations deploy increasingly sophisticated tools to monitor application usage, browsing, productivity, security risks and employee behaviour, the legal debate is shifting from whether monitoring is permissible to how much monitoring is justified, for what purpose and with what safeguards.
A company laptop does not give employers a blank cheque
An employer can have legitimate reasons to monitor activity on corporate devices, but ownership of the device does not automatically extinguish an employee's expectation of privacy.
Alay Razvi, managing...
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