Why Does Hybrid Working Come with More AI Monitoring at Work?
Direct answer: Hybrid working increasingly comes bundled with more AI monitoring because the same technology that enables remote and hybrid work, telepresence tools, is, by design, built to also track it: location flexibility and surveillance sit inside the same system. New research from the Institute for the Future of Work (IFOW), a UK research institute focused on the impact of technology on work, finds only one thing reliably separates the two: whether workers have genuine rights and voice, backed by a trade union, to negotiate how that technology is used. This week's hybrid work data from Owl Labs shows what that bundle feels like in practice: visibility pressure, a creeping six-day week, and rising output expectations, even as hybrid arrangements themselves hold steady.
The throughline: hybrid work and surveillance are travelling together
Owl Labs' tenth annual State of Hybrid Work Report, surveying 2,000 US knowledge workers, found 82% now use AI at work, with 62% saying it has raised their daily output expectations and 46% saying it sometimes actively hinders their productivity. Nearly three-quarters (74%) now work on Sundays, and 48% have tried "billboard days": timing office visits strategically for visibility with leadership rather than for the work itself (Owl Labs, 21 September 2026). Hybrid working, on paper, is intact. In practice, it is arriving with a side order of scrutiny.
IFOW's new report, published a day later and drawing on a weighted survey of over 5,000 UK working adults, offers the structural explanation. Among its six "automation archetypes" is telepresence: technology that lets someone work from a distance, whether that is a civil servant no longer required to live in London or a call handler working from home. IFOW measures telepresence using a combined index of location flexibility and surveillance — the freedom to choose where you work, alongside how much your employer tracks your time, calls, internet use and movement. That pairing is not incidental. It reflects how this technology is actually built and deployed: hybrid working and monitoring, bundled into the same system.
The one variable IFOW finds reliably separates the two is perceived rights. Using an adapted "power ladder" question (workers rate their sense of rights and agency at work from 1 to 10), the analysis shows that each one-point increase in perceived rights is associated with a statistically significant 0.86-point reduction in telepresence-linked monitoring and a 0.64-point reduction in exposure to algorithmic "matching" (task allocation and performance scoring), alongside a 1.87-point increase in genuinely autonomy-enhancing augmentation. Put plainly: workers who feel they have real standing at work are more likely to get the upside of hybrid, tech-enabled working and less likely to get the surveillance that so often comes attached to it.
Inside the IFOW report: who gets hybrid working, and who gets watched
This is a substantial single piece of UK workplace research published this year, and it deserves more than a passing mention.
Exposure is not evenly spread. Managers, directors and professionals report the highest levels of autonomy-enhancing "high-discretion" augmentation; workers in elementary, process and machine-operative roles report the lowest, and the most rights-poor. Black, Caribbean and African workers report consistently higher exposure to telepresence and matching than White workers, even once the researchers control for how much technology each group actually uses, pointing to structural rather than purely technological causes. Interestingly, this same group also reports slightly higher perceived rights than White workers on the power-ladder measure, a tension IFOW attributes largely to sector and institutional context (larger, more unionised workplaces) rather than to the automation itself being less risky for them. Workers from Asian backgrounds report higher exposure specifically to intensification and outright displacement.
Rights protect, but unevenly, depending on who backs them. IFOW's most striking finding concerns how rights are exercised, not just whether they exist. Where workers have no formal voice mechanism at all, higher perceived rights are still associated with better automation outcomes. Where workers have access to a trade union, that protective relationship holds. But where the only available voice is a non-union mechanism, such as an employee forum or joint consultative committee, the picture inverts at high levels of perceived rights: the interaction between rights and non-union voice becomes a statistically significant predictor of more telepresence and matching exposure, not less. IFOW calls this a risk of "false security": workers feel empowered, but without real bargaining power behind that feeling, the same technology gets deployed to intensify monitoring rather than autonomy.
Human resources (HR) philosophy cuts both ways. An employee-centred HR philosophy strengthens the link between perceived rights and good, autonomy-enhancing automation. But at higher levels of perceived rights, it is also associated with more telepresence, matching and displacement, not less, which IFOW reads as evidence that engagement-focused HR practices can smooth the path to adoption without necessarily giving workers real control over how that adoption unfolds.
The recommendations follow directly. IFOW is calling for a statutory right for trade unions to access workplaces where AI and monitoring technologies are deployed, a statutory right to collectively bargain over the introduction and use of workplace AI, and government-piloted "Good Work Algorithmic Impact Assessments" run through regulatory sandboxes (Institute for the Future of Work, 22 September 2026).
Why this matters for leaders
Read together, this week's two reports say something more specific than "AI adoption needs better governance." They say that hybrid working policy and algorithmic monitoring policy are, functionally, the same policy, and most organisations are still writing them separately. Owl Labs shows the employee-facing symptom: a six-day week, visibility performance, and confidence in AI sitting alongside the sense that it is quietly raising the bar. IFOW shows the mechanism underneath: without real, backed voice, the tools that enable hybrid working default to also enabling surveillance, and consultation without bargaining power can make that worse, not better.
For any organisation redesigning hybrid work policy around AI tools this autumn, the practical implication is direct: the conversation about where and when people work cannot be separated from the conversation about what gets monitored and who has a genuine say in it. Engagement surveys and forums are not a substitute for that say. According to this week's evidence, they can, at scale, be worse than having no voice mechanism at all.
FAQ
Does hybrid working automatically come with more monitoring?
Not automatically, but the two are closely bundled in how workplace technology is built. IFOW's telepresence measure combines location flexibility with surveillance because they are so often deployed together; the report finds perceived rights at work are what determines whether an individual gets more of the flexibility or more of the monitoring (IFOW, 22 September 2026).
Do employee forums and consultation committees protect workers the way unions do?
Not according to this research. IFOW found that non-union voice mechanisms, at high levels of perceived rights, were associated with significantly more exposure to monitoring and algorithmic task allocation, a pattern the authors call "false security." Union-only voice did not show this effect.
Is the Owl Labs "Sunday work becoming standard" finding UK-specific?
No, Owl Labs surveyed 2,000 US knowledge workers. IFOW's research, by contrast, surveys over 5,000 UK working adults, giving this week's two reports complementary but geographically distinct evidence bases.
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