The spread of the delta variant has kept many of America’s office employees working from home and fueled a rise in surveillance technologies by employers—in finance, law, technology and other industries—eager to keep tabs on their remote workforce, according to The Washington Post.  

A growing number of businesses are adopting new facial recognition software that can monitor employees’ working from home by showing managers when they are at their desks, but many are also investing in more traditional monitoring software, which can track an employee’s computer keystrokes and take screenshots of their work. 

Market research firm Gartner says the number of large employers using tools to track their workers doubled since the beginning of the pandemic to 60%. That number is expected to rise to 70% within the next three years, says Brian Kropp, chief of human resources research at Gartner. 

And the software is expected to become even more sophisticated, telling employers how to turn the data they collect into actionable measures to drive the business, Kropp says. Soon it might do things like tell managers how employees work together via Zoom, understand who the main contributors are and how specific patterns may lead to specific results. Read the full story.