PwC plans to track employees’ location while at work. Is this practice legal in Canada?

The COVID-19 pandemic shook up everyday life in many ways, including making work from home more common.

As the COVID threat has receded from its pandemic peak, life has largely returned to normal around the world, including in Canada.

PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) is one of the many employers that are moving towards getting staff to spend more time in the office.

After the global accounting giant recently announced plans to enforce its back-to-office policy by tracking employees in the U.K., one employment lawyer explains the situation with electronic monitoring in Canada.

The practice has been legal in Canada for many years and has expanded with the evolution of technology and post-pandemic workplace practices, said Stephen Gillman, an employment lawyer and partner with Levitt LLP in Toronto.

“It’s never been illegal to track employees, especially in the workplace,” Gillman said in a video interview with CTVNews.ca on Tuesday. “I think what’s changed since … is the scope and the way in which employees are now being tracked in the workplace.”

Electronic monitoring is common in logistics industries such as trucking, and customer service, and today the practice is expanding to more workplaces, he said.

“The law does permit tracking so long as it’s reasonably connected to the job being done.”

Some parts of the country have laws around electronic monitoring, he said. For instance, Ontario updated its Employment Standards Act in 2022 to allow the practice for companies with at least 25 employees, with some caveats.

Employers have to be transparent and inform workers how, when and why they’re being monitored, Gillman said.

“So if an employee is working from home, it wouldn’t be fair to monitor them as they do their laundry, but you may monitor how many keystrokes they’re making, who they’re calling, when they’re logging in and out for breaks,” he said. “You can’t simply just say we’re going to put an ankle bracelet on all our employees. There’s obviously laws that protect employee privacy and balance that against the interests of an employer.”

Electronic tracking, if it exists, also must be done during the workday.

“You couldn’t install a tracking device on an employee’s phone and expect that that would be fine outside of working hours,” Gillman added. “However, within working hours, these sorts of things are permitted so long as they’re rationally connected to the purpose of why it’s being done. You can’t just do it because you want to know where your employees are at all times, it’s got to be connected to the job function.”

PwC informed its 26,000 U.K. staff in early September that it will start tracking their location while working starting Jan. 1. PwC said in a memo the policy would formalize and emphasize its “approach to working together in person,” CNN reported.

The measure was announced as PwC will also require staff to spend at least three days a week, or 60 per cent of their time, in the office or with clients. The previous guidance was two or three days each week.

PwC said it will start sharing individual working location data with employees each month just like it does with hours worked and other data. “This will help to ensure that the new policy is being fairly and consistently applied across our business,” it said.

With files from CNN