Surveillance software companies, like InterGuard and Hubstaff, are seeing an increase in sales, as skeptical employers attempt to keep tabs on remote employees
Bloomberg : Tweets: @tprophet , @kingthor , @polly , @zschneeweiss , and @brightwhite Tweets: @tprophet : This is a great way to demoralize your workforce. Bad behavior now will lead to a loss of top talent later. https://twitter.com/... Soc.Thorin.Klosowski / @kingthor : install it on the ceos computer https://twitter.com/... Polly Mosendz / @polly : Employee monitoring isn't new but it is reaching new heights during this pandemic. Here's @AskAManager describing what lengths employers are going to. https://www.bloomberg.com/... https://twitter.com/... Zoe Schneeweiss / @zschneeweiss : With so many people working remotely because of the coronavirus, surveillance software is flying off the virtual shelves https://www.bloomberg.com/... via @polly @MelinAnders Jeff W. White / @brightwhite : If you run a company and decide that this is how you ensure your employees are working, you need to ask yourself where you went wrong and why you run such a shitty company. https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Workplace monitoring was already an established market before anyone worked from home: coverage in 2017 documented employers tracking web-browsing patterns, keystrokes, and private messages, and a 2019 review found surveillance technologies spreading through offices. The pandemic is the inflection point — with entire workforces suddenly remote and managers unable to see their teams, skepticism converts directly into software purchases.
That is why InterGuard and Hubstaff are reporting a sales increase now. The trajectory since suggests this wasn't a temporary spike: by late 2021, US contract lawyers described remote-work surveillance programs using facial recognition as widespread, and by 2023 vendors were pitching AI-based monitoring as a tool against burnout rather than just a guard against slacking.
First-order effects
- InterGuard and Hubstaff capture immediate revenue as skeptical employers install monitoring tools on newly remote staff, shifting the buyer relationship from occasional office deployments to company-wide rollouts.
- Employees under new surveillance face instant morale risk — critics quoted in the piece argue tracking demoralizes workforces and will cost employers top talent later.
Second-order effects
- Vendors compete by deepening capability rather than cutting price: the market moves from keystroke logs toward biometric methods, with facial-recognition programs becoming standard enough that contract lawyers treat them as routine by 2021.
- Employers who monitor heavily face a retention counter-pressure, giving less-intrusive rivals and policies a recruiting angle for top talent.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, surveillance stops being sold purely as suspicion-management and gets reframed as productivity and wellness tooling — the 2023 wave of AI monitoring marketed as a burnout fix shows the category laundering its reputation while expanding its footprint.
- Structurally, remote work normalizes always-on oversight: what began as a pandemic workaround becomes embedded infrastructure, with legal and labor norms lagging behind what the software can measure.
The trend: The pandemic turned workplace surveillance from a niche office practice into a durable remote-work industry whose scope keeps widening and whose pitch keeps softening.