Be afraid: your Big Brother boss IS watching you, your phone, your computer – and even your chair

As a City firm reveals it monitors staff attendance via data from swipecards at turnstiles, Charles Arthur looks (over his shoulder) at the growth of worker surveillance – and how even WFH keyboard strokes can give you away

Doing our jobs is starting to look a bit Orwellian (Corbis/Getty)

Some staff at the accountancy firm EY will have had an uncomfortable couple of days this week – especially if they weren’t in the office. Some of the senior partners are reportedly looking at data from the entry turnstiles, where employees have to swipe a card to gain entry, to monitor attendance at the UK offices. And they don’t like what they see: there aren’t enough people coming in to work.

Coming from one of the quartet of giant accountancy companies, such oversight might seem less Big Four than Big Brother. Although the Financial Times, which first reported the story, says that the partners are being shown “anonymised” turnstile data, the obvious implication is that if attendance doesn’t improve, the next step is to strip away the anonymity and start dropping much stronger hints about office attendance in accordance with their policy of at least two days WFO a week.

The big drive to get people back into the office is clearly in full swing – and companies like EY can use automation to begin to enforce it.