Yes, I'm sure it must already break certain laws. The webcam aspect is especially out there, because at the end of the day a family home is not the office workplace.

I recall reading a case where a specific work router or connection had to be used by someone working at home, and as consequence the whole family were essentially inadvertently monitored and this was deemed to have violated law. The same is likely true of any family use of a work laptop, or anything caught on it via audio or video. Lots of grey areas no doubt!

You're right, there must be tools and methods that are more hands off and just track basic information so that people are known to be doing their job. When management attempt to be overly controlling in the workplace its bad enough; when that attitude enters your home too its even more unnerving.

Is your daughter's boyfriend Owen Paterson ?

I disengage, I turn the page.

How many zoom calls have you been in with a shirt & tie on the top half and joggers/underpants/pj bottoms/slippers on the lower half?

A stairway to Heaven and a Highway to Hell give some indication of expected traffic numbers

The thing that I struggle with in this debate is what people would even be monitoring?!?! I can only assume a job where there isnt an output?! But I cant even think what that would be?

Very few jobs are assessed by the workers input, and almost all by the output.

There are times when the output is closely aligned to the time spent on it - e.g. data entry

But in most situations it isn't.

And regardless of location you judge your employees on what their produce and how they do it.

So no I wouldn't want people taking the piss, but if they nail a presentation, or make a sale, why not take the rest of the afternoon off - you've added more positive value than sat at a screen for a few more hours pretending to work.

I've done a fair bit of working from home over my career. When my kids were really young, I was fortunate to work for about 10 years with two days at home (this started about 15 years ago) and since lockdown I've been working from home with the occasional trip into the office recently.

Personally, if the company I work for suddenly said that we had to have webcams on or keystrokes recorded, then I would start looking for another job straight away, as I find that a massive intrusion and a complete lack of trust from the employer. The idea that you need to have bums on seats in the office (virtual or not) from 9-6, for my industry anyway, is a hangover from the past. We're not all sitting at desks with and in and out trays or reliant on being in the office to have the equipment we need to do our jobs like a few decades ago. If technology gives the implied pressure that we should be contactable whenever or expected to be able to be reply to emails and be available at any time, then it also should come with more freedoms for the employee.

Personally I think people should be measured on what they produce, are they on time with deadlines and the quality of their work. I've seen people work from dawn till dusk (and dusk from dawn sometimes) and produce absolute dog sh!te that someone has then had to redo because they wanted to look "productive". If you get your job done, you do it well and on time then what's the problem?

The trouble with computers, of course, is that they're very sophisticated idiots

I prefer the Jury's Inn to be wooed at