Security News > 2020 > August > Brit bank Barclays probed amid claims bosses used high-tech to spy on staff, measure productivity

The British offices of Barclays Bank are under investigation over allegations that managers spied upon their own staff as part of a workplace productivity improvement drive.

Back in February, the bank trialled tracking software to detail the amount of time employees spent at their desk, as revealed by City AM. Last week an employee received a "Work yoga" assessment on their daily performance informing them they had spent "Not enough time in the Zone yesterday," the City paper reports.

A spokesperson for the Information Commissioner's Office told The Register today: "We have an ongoing investigation relating to Barclays' alleged use of employee monitoring tools."

An office rebellion reportedly prompted Barclays to halt the monitoring and inform the ICO. The referral was said to have been made over a potential breach of data protection laws guaranteeing employees a degree of privacy in the workplace.

In 2011 Microsoft went as far as applying to patent employee monitoring tech, on the grounds that making staff more trusting of their employer was cheaper than a pay rise and enabled the filtering out of "Undesired behaviours".

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/08/10/barclays_employee_monitoring/