Professionals and the Ethics of Workplace Surveillance

Surveillance, in the broadest sense, is the act of paying close and sustained attention to some entity, individual or group, for some particular reason (Clarke 1988; Lyon 2001; Macnish 2020).1 In a New York Times article, Kantor and Sundaram (2022) describe recent developments in workplace surveillance. Central to these developments is the surge of employers subjecting employees to productivity monitoring and assigning employees productivity scores. A variety of metrics are used to determine levels of worker productivity. Monitoring is sometimes carried out manually by assigning productivity points to particular tasks and then adding up a worker's total points at the end of a fixed time period to determine their overall level of productivity. Increasingly, such monitoring is carried out electronically. “Bossware”2 is a colloquial name given to software that enables employers to monitor the activities of employees (Bailey 2022, 534). This monitoring can include tracking keystrokes and mouse movement, logging the number and duration of calls, analyzing email conversations and response times, tapping into worker's mobile calls, and taking screenshots of employee's devices. These productivity measures can be used to determine a worker's level of compensation. Amazon distribution warehouse workers, laborers, and call center workers have long been subjected to productivity monitoring. Kantor and Sundaram (2022) describe how highly skilled professional workers, including lawyers, social workers, and healthcare professionals, are increasingly being subjected to productivity monitoring too, largely in response to increases in working from home, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The proximate aim of most employers in introducing productivity monitoring in professional settings, in the wake of the global pandemic, was to ensure that employees working from home were at least as efficient and accountable as they had been before they commenced working from home. The ultimate aim was, of course, to minimize losses. Once productivity monitoring techniques were set up, many employers realized that they could use these techniques to improve efficiency and accountability and thereby maximize profits. Some workers have embraced the new surveillance, reporting that the intrusions are more than compensated for by increases in their own efficiency and, subsequently, salary. However, there are conflicts between productivity monitoring and the interests of employees. Some of these conflicts are familiar. Screenshots of employees in their homes compromise employee privacy (Indiparambil 2019; Miller and Weckert 2000; Palm 2009). Judging whether employees are actively engaged in work by their mouse movements and keystrokes compromises employee autonomy as many workers report reluctance to step away from their computer to use the toilet or to make coffee for fear of being judged “idle” and having their pay deducted as a result (Brey 1999; Anderson 2017). In this article, we want to draw attention to a less familiar conflict that is the result of performance monitoring being extended to professionals. Professionals are members of professional associations, and, crucially for our purposes, acquire professional obligations. We show that there is often a tension between the productivity monitoring of professionals and their ability to fulfill professional obligations. This tension does not always arise—as we will discuss, sometimes surveillance enhances the ability of professionals to fulfill professional obligations—but it often arises and it is important to identify where it occurs. After spelling out in greater detail what we mean by “professionals” and discussing the grounds for professional obligations in Section 2, we then provide some examples of ways that surveillance can compromise a professional's ability to fulfill their professional obligations in Section 3. In Section 4, we then discuss cases where surveillance may help professionals fulfill professional obligations. In Section 5, we offer a diagnosis of the wrongness of using surveillance in ways that run counter to professional obligations, developing the idea that there is a duty of employers to adhere to the principle of unhindered professionalism. In Section 6, we consider some objections to our view. We finish up in Section 7 by identifying constraints on morally permissible uses of workplace surveillance that follow from our diagnosis. Some of the lessons that we will draw from our discussion may be applicable, at least to an extent, to non-professional employees. We will not be exploring these extended applications in this article. The term “professional” is often used in a loose sense to describe anyone who works in an office—a “white collar,” rather than a “blue collar” employee. What we have in mind is a more specific sense of the term which picks out members of recognized professions. Paradigm examples are medicine, law, engineering, and psychotherapy. To become and remain a member of one of these professions a person must undertake particular forms of training, maintain membership in an appropriate professional association and take on various other professional obligations, such as fulfilling a professional code of ethics, adhering to professional standards, and abiding by professional codes of conduct. Professional associations wield considerable power in contemporary Western societies. They are often granted cartel or monopoly control over the provision of a particular set of services in particular societies, on the understanding that they will ensure that the services provided meet standards of quality that their society expects (Cholbi 2018). 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