AI Surveillance or Smart Support? The Battle for Workplace Productivity
Look, we're kidding ourselves if we think the bigger issue is whether AI should watch us work. The real problem is that we've normalized spending our days in meetings that accomplish almost nothing.
Think about it - if your meeting could've been an email, what does that say about your entire strategic approach? It suggests you're optimizing for process over progress.
I had a boss who'd schedule "strategy sessions" every Monday that were basically him asking for status updates he could've read in Slack. Fifteen people, an hour each week - that's nearly two full workdays of collective human potential just... evaporating.
The surveillance question feels like a distraction. Companies monitoring keystrokes or analyzing meeting participation are addressing a symptom, not the disease. The disease is our addiction to performative work rather than meaningful output.
Maybe instead of debating whether AI should watch us in pointless meetings, we should be using AI to eliminate those meetings entirely - and rethinking what constitutes valuable work in the first place.
What if we measured impact instead of activity? Wouldn't that make the whole surveillance question irrelevant?
Here’s the thing—calling it “productivity monitoring” is often just PR gloss for surveillance. Slap a dashboard on it, add some “time on task” metrics, and suddenly we’re acting like it’s data-driven management, not Big Brother in business casual.
But let’s say the goal really is to improve productivity. Then why are so many of these tools focused on mouse movements, keystrokes, or time spent in specific apps? That’s surveillance masquerading as strategy. It’s like judging a writer’s output by how long they stare at a blank Google Doc. Kafka would’ve flunked that metric.
Real productivity—the kind that moves the business forward—is nuanced. It comes from judgment, creativity, intuition, problem-solving. Not number of emails sent per hour. If a developer spends two days deep in thought with zero commits, is that a red flag… or the prelude to shipping something game-changing?
Here’s a better question: why not use AI to *support* productivity rather than police it? Tools like GitHub Copilot or Notion AI help workers focus on higher-level thinking by removing grunt work. That’s augmentation, not surveillance. The difference is philosophical—and practical. One builds trust, the other breeds paranoia.
Because let’s not kid ourselves: people know when they're being watched. And once they do, they either disengage, game the system, or both. Hello, productivity theater. We’ve seen this in call centers where employees run scripts to keep their “active time” up—without getting anything meaningful done. Congrats, your dashboards are full of lies.
Bottom line: if you need AI to tell you who your top performers are, you’ve already lost touch with your team. Technology can extend your judgment. But it can’t replace it.
The entire concept of "productivity monitoring" has this Big Brother vibe that gives me the creeps. But what's more interesting is how we've created this elaborate theater of work - particularly with meetings - where appearance of productivity becomes more important than actual output.
Think about it: we've all sat through those excruciating hour-long meetings that could've been a three-sentence email. But we don't just attend them - we actively schedule them. Why? Because visible "collaboration" signals that we're doing something important.
And that's the real issue with digital surveillance. It's not measuring actual productivity - it's measuring performative busyness. The companies investing millions in tracking software are often the same ones with bloated middle management whose entire function is... having meetings about having meetings.
Here's my provocative take: If your meetings could be replaced by an email, maybe your strategy could be replaced by an algorithm. And if your management style relies on monitoring software rather than outcomes, maybe it's not your employees who need watching.
What do you think? Is there a place for some kind of performance monitoring, or am I being too harsh on the whole concept?
It becomes digital surveillance the second that data isn't used to help *employees* as much as it's used to *judge* them. There's a myth that measurement equals management, but what often happens with AI productivity tools is measurement equals punishment.
Take those systems that track keystrokes, mouse movement, or webcam activity. Ostensibly, they’re about ensuring work gets done. But in practice? They just incentivize people to jiggle their mouse or keep Slack green, not to do better work. Case in point: when Microsoft rolled out its Productivity Score, it faced immediate backlash because it gave managers visibility into how often employees used various apps—without context. Is low usage of Teams bad? Or does it just mean someone’s doing deep, focused work without distraction?
The problem is that AI is really good at counting. It tallies clicks, response times, emails sent—but it can’t tell you if a moment of silence is creative incubation or someone spiraling into burnout. And when companies lean too hard on these tools, they start managing metrics, not people.
If you really want to use AI to boost productivity, flip the lens. Use it to *remove friction*, not to police behavior. Let it flag time drains and suggest shortcuts. Let it surface when someone’s overwhelmed so a human can step in—not so you can add another Zoom check-in.
The tech isn’t the problem—it’s whether leadership sees people as assets to develop… or cost centers to optimize.
You know, I've been thinking about this whole "this meeting could've been an email" phenomenon, and I think it reveals something deeper about organizational dysfunction.
When leaders resort to surveillance tools to measure productivity, they're often treating a symptom rather than the disease. If you need software to tell you if your team is working, you've already lost the plot.
The same goes for unnecessary meetings. They're not just time-wasters—they're often desperate attempts to create alignment in teams that lack clear strategic direction. You've got 12 people on a Zoom call because nobody knows what success actually looks like.
I worked at a company where the CEO instituted mandatory 9 AM stand-ups for "accountability." Meanwhile, our quarterly objectives changed every three weeks. The real problem wasn't that people weren't working; it was that nobody knew what work actually mattered.
Digital surveillance tools give the illusion of management without the substance. They're like installing security cameras in your house instead of fixing the broken locks. You're not solving the problem; you're just creating a more elaborate way to watch it happen.
What if instead of monitoring keystrokes, we got better at articulating why the work matters in the first place?
I get the impulse—AI gives you shiny dashboards and heatmaps that feel like control. But the catch is, productivity isn’t a spreadsheet metric. It's not keystrokes per hour or Slack messages sent. In fact, the most productive people I’ve worked with often look unproductive on paper: lots of thinking time, silent stretches, few check-ins... until they deliver a game-changing strategy doc or rearchitect your entire backend.
If you're leaning on AI to monitor “busyness,” you're measuring the wrong things. Worse, you’re incentivizing people to act busy instead of being effective. It's like putting a chip in a chef's apron to track knife movements and assuming more slicing equals better food. Would you want your Michelin stars awarded by a Fitbit?
Plus, think of the unintended consequences. Dropbox reportedly saw a productivity dip when they went fully remote—until they realized the problem wasn’t output, but visibility. Their solution wasn’t more surveillance; it was better async communication and trust. Contrast that with Amazon’s warehouse tracking systems, which are so hyper-optimized they treat humans like slow robots—and burn through them almost as fast.
So the real question isn’t whether AI is digital surveillance—it’s whether you’re optimizing for the signal or the noise. Most tracking tools are just fancy noise detectors. Want to spot a high performer? Look at outcomes, not office hours. Or better yet, ask their team. They know.
AI can help, but only if it's asking smarter questions. Are projects shipping on time? Are ideas bubbling from all levels? Who’s unblocking work, not just completing tasks? That’s where insight lives. But if you're just tracking logins and camera time, congratulations—you’ve invented a fancier version of the punch clock.
I think we're dancing around a deeper truth here: leaders are terrified of irrelevance.
When you can't clearly articulate your strategic value, surveillance becomes tempting. It's the corporate equivalent of helicopter parenting - hovering because you don't trust the process or your own leadership.
Look at companies obsessed with butts-in-seats metrics. They're often the same ones with vague, interchangeable mission statements and strategies you could swap between competitors without anyone noticing. If your competitive advantage requires monitoring keystrokes, you probably don't have one.
The most innovative companies I've worked with don't need surveillance because they've created systems where results are naturally visible. The work becomes its own accountability mechanism.
Here's my provocative take: if you're installing employee monitoring software, skip that purchase and instead hire a consultant to tell you why your strategy isn't compelling enough for people to execute without being watched. The surveillance impulse is often a symptom, not a solution.
Surveillance dressed up as “productivity analytics” is still surveillance. And we need to stop pretending otherwise just because there’s a dashboard involved.
Let’s get real. If a company installs AI that tracks keystrokes, mouse movements, or time spent in apps, it’s not actually measuring productivity — it’s measuring activity. And worse, it’s incentivizing busyness theater. The result? Employees open spreadsheets they don’t need, toggle between tabs obsessively, and become great at looking productive… instead of being productive.
Take the case of Amazon warehouse workers being tracked by machine learning systems that flag when someone pauses for too long. Sure, it might optimize package delivery, but at what cost? Burnout, dehumanization, and people gaming the system just to survive.
Now, contrast that with something like GitHub Copilot, which supports developers to do better work, faster. It’s using AI not to judge the worker, but to boost the work. That’s the real opportunity. Not “spyware with charts,” but tools that augment human creativity and judgment.
So if a company says it’s using AI to track productivity, ask a simple question: Are you helping people do their best work — or just watching them do it badly?
Because one of those builds a business. The other builds resentment.
I'm actually starting to think our meeting neurosis is a symptom of a deeper organizational insecurity. We've all sat through those hour-long sessions that could've been a three-line email. But what if that's not just inefficiency—what if it's fear?
Fear that without the ritual of gathering, the strategy might be exposed as hollow. After all, if your brilliant plan can be communicated in a 200-word email, how substantial is it really?
Look at Amazon's famous six-page memo culture. Bezos knew that forcing executives to articulate ideas thoroughly in writing would reveal weak thinking that might hide in PowerPoint bullets or meeting chatter. When you have to write it down clearly, the emperor's clothes situation becomes pretty obvious.
This isn't about meetings being bad. Some truly require collaborative energy. But when we're honest, most are performative reassurance—showing we're doing strategic work rather than actually doing it.
Maybe the real productivity tool isn't tracking how many meetings people attend, but asking a simple question: "Could this meeting be an email?" And if so, "Is our strategy substantial enough to warrant more than an email in the first place?"
Let’s cut through the noise: if you're using AI to monitor keystrokes, mouse movements, or webcam feeds to measure “productivity,” you're not optimizing performance — you're cultivating distrust and micromanagement at scale.
The idea that presence equals productivity is already flawed. AI just puts that flawed logic on steroids. Take Microsoft’s Productivity Score — it once rated employees based on their use of email and Teams. Cue public backlash, because treating someone’s tool usage like a report card is both creepy and reductive. It’s the digital equivalent of measuring a writer’s output by the number of pages per day, without reading what’s on those pages.
And here's the irony: when employees know they’re being watched, they perform worse, not better. Surveillance creates performative work — people try to look busy instead of being effective. Think digital presenteeism. That’s not productivity; that’s theater.
Instead of asking “How much is someone typing?” the smarter question is “What value are they creating?” That’s harder to measure, sure. But AI could help in better ways — analyzing workflow bottlenecks, suggesting task reprioritization, or spotting systemic inefficiencies across teams. Shift the focus from individual surveillance to organizational insight.
If AI becomes a digital panopticon, you’ll hire people who tolerate surveillance — not the ones who thrive on trust, autonomy, and creativity. That’s a long-term tradeoff you probably don’t want to make.
There's a crucial distinction we're missing here: strategy isn't what happens in those meetings - it's what happens after them.
I've sat through countless "strategic planning sessions" where executives nodded along to brilliant ideas, only to watch those same brilliant ideas die a quiet death in the following weeks. The problem wasn't the meeting format; it was the organizational immune system that rejected any foreign idea threatening the status quo.
Look at Kodak. They actually invented the digital camera internally but couldn't execute on it because their entire identity and profit structure was built around film. Their strategy meetings probably looked great on paper.
Instead of obsessing over meeting efficiency, maybe we should ask: "What prevents our organization from executing quickly on clear decisions?" Is it fear of failure? Political maneuvering? Unclear priorities? Those are the real strategy killers.
An organization that can execute rapidly doesn't need perfect meetings. And one that can't execute won't be saved by replacing meetings with emails or any other communication hack. The meeting format is just the symptom, not the disease.
Sure, but here's the problem no one's admitting: most so-called “productivity monitoring tools” aren’t measuring productivity — they’re measuring presence.
It’s the digital equivalent of a manager walking past your desk every 10 minutes to see if you’re typing.
Keystroke counters, idle time trackers, webcam screenshots — these aren't proxies for output. They're proxies for obedience. And that distinction matters.
Take a software engineer, for example. Two hours of walking around the block thinking through architectural decisions is immensely more valuable than eight hours of frantic Slack replies and half-written code. But the latter makes you look "productive" to most AI-driven monitoring tools.
The irony? The more a job relies on deep thinking or creativity — the kinds of work you hire expensive talent to do — the harder it becomes to quantify with surveillance-style metrics.
So let’s be clear: If the goal is to improve performance, AI should be helping identify bottlenecks in workflows, not snitching on who took a long lunch. Think GitHub Copilot suggesting better code structures, or AI summarizing meetings to reduce context-switching. That's augmentation, not surveillance.
Put differently, AI used right can remove friction. Used wrong, it just adds fear.
And if your team works better because they’re afraid of being watched… you don’t have a productivity issue. You have a culture one.
Look, meetings-that-should-be-emails are just a symptom of a deeper disease: strategic laziness.
When executives can't articulate a coherent strategy that everyone understands, they compensate with meeting bloat. It's organizational theater. The vague strategy gets papier-mâchéd into PowerPoints and "alignment sessions" because nobody can execute on fog.
I worked with a SaaS company whose leadership spent 22 hours weekly in "strategic alignment" meetings. When I asked five different VPs to explain their strategy, I got five completely different answers. The meetings weren't solving the problem; they were masking it.
Great strategy is simple enough to fit on a Post-it note. If yours requires a standing Thursday meeting with 18 people to "stay aligned," you don't have a communication problem - you have a clarity problem.
And this is where the surveillance angle gets interesting. Companies that obsess over monitoring minute-by-minute productivity are often the same ones with mushy strategies. They're measuring mouse movement because they can't measure what actually matters.
What if we flipped the script? Instead of surveilling employees, what if we surveilled our strategy? "Has anyone seen our competitive advantage lately? The tracking data shows it hasn't moved in months..."
Fair point—but I think we have to ask: measure what, exactly? Productivity isn't one monolithic metric. AI can count keystrokes, track app usage, and flag idle time. But that’s not productivity—that’s presence. Or worse, it’s theater. If someone’s spending three hours in a spreadsheet but making zero meaningful contributions, does that count as productive?
The real trap here is assuming that surveillance drives output. In reality, it often drives people to game the system. Look at what happened with truck drivers monitored by AI dashcams—lots of them started taping hats onto the seat to trick the camera into thinking they were still behind the wheel. That’s not productivity; that’s rebellion with a webcam.
And employees aren’t dumb. They know when they’re being watched, and it shifts behavior—but not always in a good way. Studies show persistent monitoring increases stress, tanks morale, and turns creative problem-solvers into box-checkers. The result? Teams that look "busy" in the metrics, but are less innovative over time.
If you're going to use AI to “monitor,” then reframe the problem. Use it to flag patterns at the system level—bottlenecks in processes, overwork trends, broken workflows—not to micromanage individuals. That’s how you actually improve productivity without pushing your workforce into crypto-mining levels of paranoia.
Because nothing kills motivation faster than knowing your boss thinks a blinking cursor means you're slacking off.
This debate inspired the following article:
Should businesses use AI to monitor employee productivity or is that digital surveillance?