Mind Your Business: Surveillance Technologies for Workplace Safety and Wellbeing

Investigating the efficacy and use of workplace health and wellbeing monitoring technologies. This project was funded under the Melbourne Law School's 2021 Research Excellence Grant scheme.

There is an increasing prevalence of devices and software being marketed for the apparently worthwhile purpose purpose of monitoring employee’s health and wellbeing in the workplace. It is likely these technologies have proliferated since the Covid-19 pandemic, finding justification in employers’ concerns for such things as enforcing health orders (social distancing), contact tracing, monitoring employee’s wellbeing, and ensuring OHS protocols are followed in the remote working environment.

Examples include eyelid monitoring to watch for sleepiness in truck drivers, scanning of open areas in workplaces to monitor observance of public health measures, computer vision for ensuring employees are wearing mandatory safety equipment, wearables to collect information on the extent to which workers are unhealthily stationary for long periods of time, and various mental health apps designed for use by employees.

The promotion of these technologies touts their use of AI in providing valuable and accurate insights into an employee’s wellbeing. Such marketing is however characterised by the same concerns that attend other technologies making quixotic claims of effectiveness – a lack of transparency in how they operate (specifically the role AI plays in the technology), a lack of empirical evidence supporting their claims, concerns for privacy, as well as sociological concerns for the power imbalance such technologies may engender.

This project intends to investigate:

  1. How the technologies purport to contribute to workplace health and safety, and the information provided to address considerations for data privacy and AI ethics;
  2. The feasibility of the technologies in achieving these outcomes or addressing these concerns, and whether the information provided is sufficient for employers to make decisions about the use of the technology, while having regard to the rights, interests and expectations of employees;
  3. The kinds of ethical, legal and workplace considerations that may arise from the claims made about the technologies, and the ways in which these considerations may be addressed.

Research Team