The workplace monitoring consultation, and what to do while it's open

A consultation most employers have not noticed yet

On 8 July 2026 the Department for Business and Trade opened "Make Work Pay: workplace monitoring technologies", a consultation on how tools like keystroke logging, webcam and productivity software, algorithmic scoring, and location tracking should be governed. It closes at 11.59pm on 30 September 2026.

The consultation itself admits nobody has a solid number for how common this already is: estimates of how many UK employers use some form of workplace monitoring technology range from as low as 20% to as high as 85%. That gap is worth sitting with. A rule being written for something this poorly measured is exactly the kind of thing worth reading before it lands, not after.

What actually counts as monitoring technology here

The scope is wider than most people assume. It covers the obvious things, keystroke logging and webcam software, and the less obvious: algorithmic productivity scoring, automated scheduling that reads performance into a rota, and location tracking for staff who work off-site. If a tool is collecting data about how someone works in order to make a judgement about them, it is in scope.

The distinction that matters most among these is not the technology but what it does with what it collects. Keystroke logging, webcam software and location tracking mostly log a fact: a keystroke happened, a vehicle was here, a person was at a desk. Algorithmic scoring does something different. It infers a judgement about a person, a productivity level, a behaviour rating, from a pattern in that data. That is automation and AI sitting inside the same consultation, and it is worth knowing which one your own tools are actually doing before you treat a question about one as a question about the other.

Nobody has a firm number for how many employers already monitor their staff, which is itself the point.

Three ways this could end up regulated

The consultation sets out three real options, not one preferred answer dressed up as a question. A statutory code of practice would let employment tribunals take it into account in relevant cases, and where an employer unreasonably failed to follow it, a tribunal could adjust compensation by up to 25%. Non-statutory guidance would be lighter touch: helpful, but creating no new legal obligation and no additional remedy if ignored. Primary legislation would go further still, requiring employers to consult and seek agreement with trade unions or elected staff representatives before introducing monitoring technology at all.

Those are meaningfully different outcomes, and which one lands changes how much process a business will need to build around any new monitoring tool it introduces from here.

A worked example

Picture a small logistics firm that tracks vehicles for routing and fuel efficiency, and is now looking at software that also scores driver behaviour. Under guidance alone, that is a business decision with some good-practice prompts attached. Under a statutory code, getting the rollout wrong could move the needle on a tribunal award. Under the legislative option, the firm could not introduce the scoring feature at all without first consulting its drivers or their representatives. The same tool, three very different obligations.

Who this affects, beyond the obvious office setting

It is easy to picture this consultation as being about office workers and keystroke loggers, but the scope reads more widely than that. Field-based staff tracked by vehicle or device location, warehouse workers timed against a handheld scanner, and home workers using productivity software that reports back on activity are all squarely inside it. If your business has any role that is not sat permanently in one office under direct sight of a manager, it is worth reading the consultation with that role specifically in mind.

Where this is heading, in our reading of it

None of what follows is something we can trace to the consultation document or a confirmed source, so take it as an outlook, not a claim. The monitoring data these tools already exist to collect, keystrokes, location, activity logs, is exactly the raw material AI models are built on. The direction of travel looks like tools that stop logging a fact and start inferring one: a productivity trend, an engagement score, a flight-risk rating, built from a pattern in behaviour rather than a plain record of it.

If that happens, it changes the question a business is actually answering. A code of practice written for keystroke counts and webcam footage is a different document from one written for a tool predicting who is about to hand in their notice. Responding to this consultation while your own tools still mostly log facts is the easier moment to do it. Waiting until they have quietly moved into prediction territory is a harder conversation to have after the fact.

What people get wrong while the consultation is open

The mistake worth avoiding is treating an open consultation as a reason to do nothing. Nothing here is in force yet, which is true, but the eight principles the consultation sets out, purpose, transparency, worker engagement, fairness, necessity, human oversight, dignity and accuracy, describe what a reasonable employer looks like regardless of which regulatory option is eventually chosen. Waiting for the final answer before being transparent with staff about monitoring already in place is waiting for permission you do not need.

What to do while it is still open

You do not need to wait for the outcome to act sensibly. List what monitoring technology your business already uses, and be honest about whether staff know it is there and why. If the consultation's outcome affects how you would actually run the business, consider responding before 30 September, since this is the stage where the detail is still genuinely open. And do not treat basic transparency, telling people what is being monitored and why, as something to hold off on until a code of practice makes you.

The part Jamie HR can help with

Jamie HR is not a monitoring tool, and this consultation is not really about what Jamie HR does. But whatever your business decides here, keeping a clear record of what staff were told, and when, is the kind of ordinary HR admin that becomes evidence later if a decision is ever questioned. That is worth having in one place regardless of how this consultation lands.