Employee Monitoring Statistics 2026: 78% of Employers Track Workers

According to a 2025 ExpressVPN survey of 1,500 U.S. employers, 78% now use online monitoring tools — a figure that has roughly doubled since the start of the pandemic. Employee monitoring statistics reveal a rapidly expanding surveillance landscape affecting tens of millions of workers across the U.S., UK, and Canada, with significant gaps between what employers disclose and what workers know.

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<a href="https://discreetinvestigations.ca/research/employee-monitoring-statistics/"><img src="https://discreetinvestigations.ca/charts/employee-monitoring-rates-by-country.png" alt="Bar chart comparing employer monitoring rates: UK employers monitoring online activity 85%, U.S. employers using online monitoring tools 78%, large employers globally 60%, and Canadian companies using at least one monitoring app 35%." width="1200" style="max-width:100%;height:auto;" /></a> <p style="font:14px/1.4 sans-serif;">Source: <a href="https://discreetinvestigations.ca/research/employee-monitoring-statistics/">Employee Monitoring Statistics 2026 — Discreet Investigations</a></p> Copy embed code

What is employee monitoring

Employee monitoring refers to the use of technology by an employer to collect data on workers’ activities, communications, productivity, location, or biometrics during or in connection with work. Common methods include:

• Email and web-browsing logs, file-access tracking, and message archiving
• Real-time screen capture, periodic screenshots, and keystroke recording
• GPS or geolocation tracking via company devices and vehicle telematics
• Video surveillance, badge-access logs, and biometric (fingerprint, face, retina) scans
• AI-powered productivity scoring, sentiment analysis, and idle-time detection

Monitoring may occur on employer-owned devices, personal devices used for work (BYOD), or in physical workspaces.

The scope of what qualifies as monitoring has widened significantly. Ontario’s Employment Standards Act, 2000 (s. 41.1.1), introduced by the Working for Workers Act, 2022, requires employers with 25 or more employees to maintain a written policy stating whether they electronically monitor workers, describing the methods and circumstances of monitoring, and disclosing the purposes for which collected data may be used. Ontario was the first jurisdiction in North America to mandate this disclosure, setting a benchmark that other regulators have since studied closely.

The harms of monitoring extend beyond simple privacy loss. A 2024 peer-reviewed study of 3,508 Canadian workers published in Social Currents (SAGE/PMC) 2024 found that workplace surveillance operates through three distinct stress pathways — heightened job pressures, perceived privacy violations, and reduced autonomy — which fully mediate surveillance’s association with increased psychological distress. For further context on how employers validate credentials before hiring monitored workers, see our companion post on resume lie statistics.

For a broader look at our surveillance research, visit the surveillance research hub, or the workplace research hub for hiring-side topics. Note that workplace surveillance and personal-life surveillance are governed by different legal frameworks — for the Criminal Code rules that apply to recording conversations in any context, see our legal research on one-party consent recording in Canada.

How widespread is employee monitoring

Gartner 2022 reported that the share of large employers tracking workers had doubled since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic to 60%, with a projection that figure would climb to 70% by 2025. The ExpressVPN 2025 survey of 1,500 U.S. employers found that 78% use online monitoring tools — including 59% that engage in real-time screen tracking and 62% that review employees’ web browsing logs. Physical surveillance is also pervasive: 69% use video surveillance and 58% deploy biometric access controls.

In the UK, an ExpressVPN 2024 survey found that 85% of employers admit to monitoring their staff’s online activity. Of UK employers that monitor, 54% track active work hours, 36% review website visits, 36% monitor inbound and outbound emails, and 27% engage in real-time screen monitoring.

Among Canadian remote workers surveyed in a Capterra 2022 study of 752 employees, 35% work at companies that use at least one employee monitoring app — 28% adopted tools before the pandemic and 7% implemented them after COVID-19’s arrival. Nearly one in five (18%) were unsure whether their employer uses monitoring tools.

The Owl Labs 2024 State of Hybrid Work report — based on a survey of 2,000 full-time U.S. workers — found that 46% said their employer added or increased employee tracking software in the past year, with an additional 10% uncertain about their company’s practices.

What employers monitor: methods and adoption rates

A 2023 analysis by StandOut CV 2023 of 50 popular employee monitoring software tools found that 96% include time tracking, 86% offer real-time activity monitoring, 82% log website and app usage, 78% capture screenshots, and 40% include keystroke recording. Stealth-mode operation — software invisible to employees — was available in 38% of tools, though that figure declined 23% between 2021 and 2023.

The same StandOut CV analysis found that invasiveness scores across monitoring software rose from 45% to 53% between 2021 and 2023. Video monitoring grew 42% and location/GPS tracking grew 45% over the same period, reflecting post-pandemic expansion of remote-worker surveillance capabilities.

In Canada, the Capterra 2022 survey found the most common monitoring target among companies using employee tracking apps is attendance (81%). Email monitoring (33%), website logging (24%), and chat/message monitoring (23%) follow. Only 7% of Canadian employers with monitoring tools track personal social media.

Among companies with majority-remote workforces, monitoring is even more intensive. A 2023 ResumeBuilder 2023 survey of 1,000 business leaders found that 96% of remote companies use some form of employee monitoring software and 37% require employees to be on a live video feed during work hours — of those, 93% actively monitor those feeds, most for four or more hours per day.

Pre-employment screening is closely related: employers who invest heavily in hiring verification tend to layer monitoring on top. For data on what employers uncover before the first day of work, see our research on resume lie statistics, and our pre-employment screening service overview for how Canadian employers verify credentials before extending offers.

How employees feel about being monitored

Worker sentiment on monitoring is broadly negative, with meaningful differences by age, race, and work status.

• According to the APA 2023 Work in America survey, 51% of workers are aware their employer uses technology to monitor them. Monitored employees were more likely to describe their mental health as poor or fair (32%) compared to non-monitored workers (24%), and 56% of monitored workers reported feeling tense or stressed at work, versus 40% of non-monitored peers.
• The ExpressVPN 2025 survey found that 49% of U.S. workers would consider quitting if their employer increased surveillance, and 24% said they would accept a pay cut of up to 25% to avoid being monitored. Among workers already monitored, 33% said they constantly worry about being watched.
• In the UK, the ExpressVPN 2024 survey found that 47% of workers aged 18–24 reported feeling stressed by employer monitoring and 51% of UK employees said they would rather quit than endure constant surveillance. About 35% reported feeling a lack of trust from their employer, and 14% said they felt dehumanized.
• The Pew Research Center 2023 survey of 11,004 U.S. adults found that 81% believe workers would feel inappropriately watched under AI monitoring, 66% expect collected data to be misused, and 61% oppose AI tracking workers’ movements.

Opposition to AI monitoring by age and race (Pew Research Center 2023)

Racial and ethnic differences are also significant. Pew Research Center 2023 data shows that 56% of Black adults say racial or ethnic bias is a major problem in employee performance evaluations, compared with approximately 40% of Asian or Hispanic adults and 23% of White adults. Among those who see bias as a problem, 46% believe AI monitoring could help address it, while 13% worry it would make bias worse.

Employee monitoring and mental health

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<a href="https://discreetinvestigations.ca/research/employee-monitoring-statistics/"><img src="https://discreetinvestigations.ca/charts/employee-monitoring-mental-health.png" alt="Grouped bar chart comparing monitored and non-monitored U.S. workers across four mental-health measures: feel tense or stressed at work 56% vs 40%, workplace harms their mental health 45% vs 29%, describe mental health as poor or fair 32% vs 24%, and report mental health harm at work 28% vs 16%." width="1200" style="max-width:100%;height:auto;" /></a> <p style="font:14px/1.4 sans-serif;">Source: <a href="https://discreetinvestigations.ca/research/employee-monitoring-statistics/">Employee Monitoring Statistics 2026 — Discreet Investigations</a></p> Copy embed code

The APA 2023 Work in America survey found that 45% of monitored workers say their workplace negatively affects their mental health, versus 29% of non-monitored workers. Monitored employees were also nearly twice as likely to report experiencing mental health harm at work (28% vs. 16%).

A 2024 peer-reviewed study of 3,508 Canadian workers published in Social Currents (SAGE/PMC) 2024 identified three mediated pathways from surveillance to psychological distress: heightened job pressures (accounting for over 50% of the indirect effect), perceived privacy violations (approximately 22%), and reduced job autonomy. The authors used structural equation modelling on data from the Canadian Quality of Work and Economic Life Study (C-QWELS), finding these three pathways fully explain the surveillance-to-distress relationship rather than direct surveillance impact.

Behavioral consequences compound the mental health picture. In the ExpressVPN 2025 survey of U.S. workers, employees facing both online and physical monitoring reported stress levels of 45%, compared with 28% among workers in less-surveilled environments. Among behavioral consequences, 24% of workers take fewer breaks to avoid appearing idle, 32% feel pressured to work faster, and 32% fear their monitoring data will be misinterpreted.

The Dais / Future Skills Centre 2022 Canadian survey of 1,500 remote workers found that among the 32% experiencing invasive monitoring (keystroke logging, webcam recording, location tracking, screen capture, or biometrics), employer trust was significantly lower: only 50% of those with no control over monitoring trusted their employer, compared with 69% of those who had some or full control. Providing written monitoring information boosted trust to 72%, versus 54% for workers who received no explanation.

Remote and in-office monitoring compared

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 2024, approximately one in five U.S. workers (22.9%) teleworked or worked from home for pay in Q1 2024 — up from 19.6% a year earlier. Women teleworked at a higher rate than men (24.9% vs. 21.1%), and workers with advanced degrees teleworked at the highest rates of any educational group (43.6%).

The expansion of remote work has driven a near-total adoption of monitoring tools in remote-heavy organizations. A 2023 ResumeBuilder 2023 survey found that only 10% of remote companies monitored employees before the pandemic, but 37% began monitoring during the first year and 20% started within the year before the survey — meaning the share of remote companies using monitoring grew roughly tenfold between 2019 and 2023. Separately, 73% of those surveyed companies have terminated employees based on monitoring data.

The Dais / Future Skills Centre 2022 Canadian study found that 70% of remote employees experience some form of digital monitoring, with younger workers (aged 16–29) disproportionately affected: 47% reported monitoring increases in the past year, compared with 41% of lower-income workers (household income under $50,000), 41% of workers with disabilities, and 36% of racialized workers.

In the UK, a Prospect (UK union) / People Management 2021 survey of 2,400 UK workers found that webcam monitoring of remote employees more than doubled in six months: 5% of remote workers reported having cameras installed at home in April 2021, rising to 13% by October 2021. Overall monitoring rose from 24% to 32% in the same period. Workers aged 18–34 experienced the highest rates at 48%.

AI-powered monitoring: the emerging frontier

AI-powered analytics represent the fastest-growing category of workplace surveillance tools. According to the ExpressVPN 2025 survey of U.S. employers, 61% already use AI-powered analytics to measure employee productivity, and 67% collect biometric data — making AI-driven monitoring one of the most rapidly expanding surveillance methods in U.S. workplaces.

In the UK, the ExpressVPN 2024 survey found that 92% of employers believe in-office badging and biometric systems boost productivity, and 91% view online monitoring as effective. However, 38% of UK employers acknowledge using recorded communications data in performance reviews, and 29% report using surveillance data to discipline or fire employees.

Public skepticism about AI-assisted employment decisions runs deep. Pew Research Center 2023 data shows that 55% of Americans oppose using AI-generated monitoring data for firing decisions, and 47% oppose using it in promotion decisions. Only 14% favor AI use in termination decisions and 22% in promotion decisions — suggesting that public acceptance of routine AI monitoring does not extend to consequential employment actions.

The same Pew data highlights an important age gradient: 64% of adults aged 18–29 oppose AI monitoring of computer activity, compared with 38% of those aged 65 and older. Across all six types of AI monitoring asked about, adults under 65 are consistently more likely to oppose monitoring than those 65 and over.

How monitoring rates compare across the US, UK, and Canada

Comparing employer monitoring prevalence across three countries using survey data from 2022–2025 reveals both a gradient in adoption rates and a consistent disclosure gap:

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<a href="https://discreetinvestigations.ca/research/employee-monitoring-statistics/"><img src="https://discreetinvestigations.ca/charts/employee-monitoring-disclosure-gap.png" alt="Bar chart showing the U.S. workplace monitoring disclosure gap: 86% of employers say they disclose monitoring, while only 22% of employees know they are monitored — a 64-point gap." width="1200" style="max-width:100%;height:auto;" /></a> <p style="font:14px/1.4 sans-serif;">Source: <a href="https://discreetinvestigations.ca/research/employee-monitoring-statistics/">Employee Monitoring Statistics 2026 — Discreet Investigations</a></p> Copy embed code

The regulatory picture diverges sharply. Ontario’s Employment Standards Act, 2000 (s. 41.1.1) requires all employers with 25 or more employees to maintain a written electronic monitoring policy — the first jurisdiction in North America to mandate monitoring disclosure. The UK has no equivalent statutory disclosure requirement, and no U.S. federal law requires employers to inform workers they are being monitored, though some U.S. states have enacted their own notification laws.

Employee awareness of monitoring diverges significantly by country. In the U.S., only 22% of employees know they’re monitored online, despite 86% of employers reporting they disclose monitoring practices (ExpressVPN 2025). In Canada, 16% of monitored workers received no notification of monitoring at all, and only 30% received complete written information (Dais / Future Skills Centre 2022). In the UK, 38% of employees don’t know their employer can legally monitor work communications (ExpressVPN 2024).

What this means for employers and workers

The data converges on a central tension: employers are rapidly expanding monitoring while workers are increasingly resistant — and the gap between disclosure and comprehension threatens both trust and retention.

Transparency is the single most actionable lever. Workers who received complete written information about monitoring trusted their employer at a 72% rate, versus 54% for those given no information (Dais / Future Skills Centre 2022). Separately, 78% of U.S. workers in the ExpressVPN 2025 survey believe companies should legally be required to disclose surveillance, and 86% of U.S. workers in the Owl Labs 2024 survey support legal disclosure mandates.

The retention implications are real. The ResumeBuilder 2023 survey found that 69% of companies with active remote monitoring programs report employees have quit due to monitoring concerns — with 35% of those companies losing six to ten workers for this reason. Separately, 97% of the same companies believe monitoring increased productivity, though only 33% reported that employees spend three or more hours daily on non-work activities.

Workers also respond with counter-productivity tactics. The ExpressVPN 2025 survey found that 24% of U.S. workers use evasion tools, with the most common being:

• Keeping unnecessary apps open to suggest active use (16%)
• Scheduling emails to mimic real-time activity (15%)
• Logging in from mobile devices to mask location (13%)
• Using mouse jiggler tools to keep status indicators “active” (12%)

In the UK, ExpressVPN 2024 found 18% keep unnecessary applications open and 11% use mouse jigglers.

For employers weighing whether monitoring is producing the outcomes they expect — or creating hidden costs in trust, turnover, and counter-productivity — corporate investigations can surface the operational data needed to assess policy effectiveness objectively. For physical observation, vehicle telematics review, or off-site verification engagements, our surveillance services team operates under Ontario’s Private Security and Investigative Services Act and applies the same disclosure-and-consent framework discussed above. Licensed · Insured · Bonded. Contact us at +1 (888) 680-0036.

Methodology and how to read these numbers

This page is a compiled dataset, not an original survey. Every figure is transcribed from a published survey, regulator publication, or peer-reviewed study, and each row in the downloadable dataset carries its source publisher, publication year, and source URL so any number can be traced back and checked.

Three limitations are worth stating plainly, because they affect how the cross-country figures should be quoted:

• Definitions differ between surveys. “Monitoring” means online activity tracking in the ExpressVPN series, use of at least one monitoring application in the Capterra Canadian survey, and productivity tracking at large employers in the Gartner estimate. These are not interchangeable measures, and the gap between the UK’s 85% and Canada’s 35% reflects survey design as well as genuine differences in practice.
• Field years span 2021 to 2025. The Canadian prevalence figures are the oldest in the set (Capterra and Dais, both 2022), so Canadian adoption today is likely understated relative to the 2025 U.S. numbers.
• Samples are national, not global. Employer-side figures come from surveys of 1,000 to 1,500 respondents in single countries; they should not be read as worldwide rates.

A small number of figures in the tables above are inferred or given as ranges rather than directly reported; these are marked inline where they appear, and the downloadable dataset contains only directly reported values. The dataset is refreshed as new waves of each survey are published, and this page keeps the same URL across refreshes so existing citations continue to resolve.

Media and research enquiries. Journalists, researchers, and educators are welcome to reproduce any chart or figure on this page with attribution. For the underlying dataset, a sector or regional breakdown, or comment from a licensed investigator on how these practices work in Canada, contact Discreet Investigations at +1 (888) 680-0036.