Winning Bizness Desk

Mumbai.TCS faces scrutiny over employee monitoring as company defends system performance tracking

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), India’s largest IT services company, has come under scrutiny over allegations that it is using monitoring tools on employees’ laptops and workstations. Reports have raised questions about whether the technology can track individual employee activity beyond routine monitoring of IT systems and network performance.

TCS, however, has denied monitoring employees’ personal activities. The company says the tools are meant to assess overall network performance and strengthen system security, rather than keep a watch on what individual employees are doing.

Dispute centres on how far monitoring tools reach

The controversy has emerged over the extent of visibility provided by the monitoring tools. The key question is whether they are restricted to system-level information or can also access detailed information linked to individual employees.

A Moneycontrol report claimed that TCS’s tools have application-level visibility, raising concerns about the extent to which employees’ activities could potentially be tracked through their laptops and workstations.

TCS, in its official response, has maintained that its monitoring is limited to the macro level. The company said it does not track individual employee activity and that the purpose is to monitor network performance and ensure system security.

Two types of workplace monitoring explained

The distinction between macro-level and employee-level monitoring is central to the controversy.

• Macro-level monitoring focuses on network load, internet speed, connectivity, system failures and possible cyberattacks.
• Employee-level monitoring can track websites visited, applications used, time spent on particular programmes, mouse movements and, in some cases, individual keystrokes.

The first category is generally aimed at keeping an organisation’s IT infrastructure secure and functioning smoothly, while the second provides much greater visibility into an individual employee’s behaviour.

Meta had also faced backlash over monitoring

The workplace surveillance debate is not confined to TCS. The global technology industry has previously faced criticism over systems capable of collecting detailed information about employees’ activities.

Meta, the global technology giant, faced similar criticism during an AI-related project involving employee monitoring. The company had introduced a system capable of collecting data on employees’ keystrokes and mouse activity.

The move triggered strong opposition, reflecting wider concerns over how far employers should go in monitoring workers and collecting data about their behaviour during working hours.

Following the backlash, Meta gave employees an option to stop the collection of such data and seek an exemption from the monitoring system.

Employee surveillance is also facing legal scrutiny

Workplace monitoring has increasingly become a subject of legal and regulatory scrutiny in different countries. However, the rules governing employee surveillance vary significantly between jurisdictions.

In some countries, employers face strict requirements over how workers’ personal data can be collected, processed and used. The legality of monitoring can also depend on what information is collected, why it is collected and whether employees have been informed about it.

For TCS, the immediate issue is therefore not simply whether monitoring tools are installed on employee devices, but what information those tools can technically access and how the data is actually being used.

The key questions in TCS controversy

• Can the tools access information beyond network and system performance?
• Does application-level visibility amount to monitoring individual employee activity?
• What data is collected, where is it stored and who can access it?
• Is the information used only for security and performance purposes?
• Are employees clearly informed about the nature and extent of such monitoring?

The controversy ultimately hinges on the difference between a company’s technical ability to collect data and the way it says that capability is actually being used.

TCS maintains that its monitoring is focused on the overall health and security of its IT infrastructure, not on tracking individual employees. The issue is likely to remain under scrutiny until there is greater clarity on the tools’ technical capabilities and the actual use of the data they collect.