Workplace surveillance is here, counting your mouse clicks and bathroom breaks

In a 2023 meta-analysis of electronic performance monitoring, psychologist Daniel Ravid and his colleagues found that watching workers tends to have the opposite of its intended effect. It ultimately fails to achieve its core aim—actually improving performance. The more intense the monitoring, the more performance declines. The findings, published in Personnel Psychology, also linked surveillance to higher rates of burnout and turnover. Another report—the 2023 IPC study—found that monitored employees report significantly higher stress, heavier workloads, poorer relationships with supervisors, and greater career uncertainty than their non-monitored peers.