Assisted by AI, companies have more options than ever to track employees, minute by minute, keystroke by keystroke. Does this have the desired effect? Ready for a Whopper with a side of Orwell?
Earlier this year, Burger King announced the rollout of Patty, an AI chatbot imbedded in headsets that tracks if cashiers neglect to say please and thank you and chimes in when a soda fountain is running low. Advances in AI, cameras, sensors and tracking software have given employers unprecedented power to monitor employees. They now observe the physical location of workers, the length and content of phone calls, keystrokes per minute, and even the tone and pitch of conversations with customers.
Now, as companies search for new ways to watch their workforce, researchers are taking a close look at the consequences of constant surveillance. Employee monitoring has become standard practice in multiple industries and workplaces. Drivers delivering packages or pizzas are increasingly being watched by AI-powered surveillance systems.
Many employees in Amazon warehouses are continuously tracked through handheld scanners, badge swipes and workstation software. Amazon uses multiple approaches to track workers in its warehouses. Technologies that keep tabs on employees hold a strong appeal for corporate leadership, says Cornelius König, a psychology researcher at Saarland University in Germany.
Leaders may believe that close surveillance can help identify top performers, increase efficiency or improve safety, he says. In practice, though, such benefits are elusive. When König reviewed studies on employee monitoring in the 2025 issue of the _Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior_, he found little to suggest that electronic surveillance improved performance.
Despite the lack of evidence, the global market for employee-monitoring technology is expected to exceed $4 billion in 2026, largely due to major companies in North America. A _New York Times_ investigation in 2022 found that eight out of the 10 largest private US employers, including United Parcel Service, Amazon and UnitedHealth Group, tracked productivity metrics of individual workers, often in real time. US postal workers are also closely watched.
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