Just over a third of EU small employers now use AI to monitor performance and productivity

36% of EU small and mid-sized employers already use AI or algorithmic systems to monitor the performance and productivity of their staff, according to Flash Eurobarometer 578, published by the European Commission on 14 October 2026.

The survey covered 12,826 telephone interviews with heads of privately owned small, medium and mid-cap companies employing between 1 and 749 people, across all 27 member states, carried out in March and April 2026.

The headline findings:

• 42% already use AI or algorithmic management, mostly in a limited or experimental way, and 21% plan to
• Uses: customer service 47%, monitoring of performance and productivity 36%, logistics, planning and staff scheduling 30%
• 61% say AI helps them make decisions, and 75% expect it to improve job quality
• 90% say people take the decisions; 2% describe their systems as fully automated
• 49% say they do not trust AI for decisions about staff
• Barriers: cost 50%, legal uncertainty 49%, lack of in-house expertise 48%

Why this matters

This is the Commission’s own number for how common workplace algorithmic monitoring has become among the employers most people actually work for. It is not a survey of large corporates with HR technology budgets. It is companies with as few as one employee, and more than a third of them are already measuring performance by machine.

That matters especially if you work remotely. When a manager cannot see you, the temptation is to measure you, and the tools to do so are now cheap and arrive bundled with software companies already own. Remote Work Europe has tracked this through the Platform Work Directive and its national transpositions, and the pattern across those is consistent: rules written for gig platforms keep turning out to describe ordinary remote employment too.

Two figures sit in useful tension. 90% say a person takes the decision. 49% say they do not trust AI to make decisions about staff. Both can be true at once, and together they describe employers using these systems as input while remaining unconvinced by them, which is roughly where the law is heading as well.

What to watch

Eurofound’s research report on algorithmic management in European workplaces, listed as forthcoming in October 2026 and not published as at 20 October. It will be the fuller European picture behind this snapshot.