Priya is standing outside a restaurant with her friends, phone in hand, laughing at something on the screen and a message lands from a colleague she’s barely spoken to in weeks- “Your smile is pretty” and “better wear that jacket next time, it’s supposed to rain.” She was shocked because the message came from an office colleague she barely had any conversation with. She hasn’t posted anything or told anyone at work where she was. It took her a while to work out how he knew. That afternoon, she’d marked her online calendar accessible to the whole team as busy with “personal time.” She’d also changed her status on the office chat app from “in a meeting” to “away.” And that morning, she’d logged a client visit on the app the company uses to track where field staff are, which is just two streets from where she was standing now.
Most workplaces today run on a stack of everyday tools that quietly track a lot more about a person than anyone prepared them for. Shared calendars that show where you’ll be and with whom, chat platforms that display “active now” and read receipts, biometric or badge-based attendance systems that log every entry and exit, and apps that track live location are part of day-to-day workplace activity. Individually, each of these exists to make work easier. Put together, and in the wrong hands, they can just as easily become a surveillance kit.
HR teams across workplaces are increasingly seeing versions of Priya’s story, where stalking is happening through varied ways of surveillance. None of it looks like the version of harassment most PoSH training will focus on, like an explicit comment, an unwanted touch, or an unwelcome message. It looks, instead, like quiet, persistent, technology-assisted watching.
Where this sits under the PoSH Act
Section 2(n) of the PoSH Act defines sexual harassment in a way that covers any unwelcome, sexually coloured, verbal or non-verbal conduct that creates an intimidating or hostile work environment. Persistent, unwanted tracking of a colleague’s movements, timed and repeated in a way that makes ordinary parts of the workday feel unsafe, fits within that definition when the underlying motive is of sexual intent rather than legitimate work coordination.
Stalking as an offence under the law
In addition to the above, stalking as a standalone offence is separately addressed under section 78 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, where police intervention is present. What a company’s Internal Committee (IC) can act on is the workplace dimension of the same behaviour, where a colleague uses office systems and office-provided visibility to track another employee in a way that is unwelcome, gendered, and creates a hostile environment at work.
What a safe work culture is actually meant to protect
A safe work culture isn’t just the absence of visible incidents; it’s the presence of personal boundaries that everyone respects. When unspoken boundaries get quietly overridden by using tools the company provides, the workplace stops being safe. An inclusive workplace extends to how comfortable people feel setting and holding personal boundaries, without having to justify or explain them.
What can be done
- Access to shared scheduling and personal data should be accessible to those who genuinely need it, and audit logs should exist for who’s viewing whose information.
- PoSH training needs to explicitly name this category of conduct. If “unwelcome tracking via workplace tools” is never mentioned in training or policy examples, employees experiencing it will keep assuming it doesn’t count, and Internal Committees (ICs) will keep treating it as outside their domain.
- An Internal Committee (IC) needs to be trained to treat a pattern of “coincidental” appearances, backed by digital evidence of calendar or location access, as exactly the kind of non-verbal conduct the PoSH Act was written to cover.
The key takeaway
Workplace tools weren’t built to harm employees and their boundaries, but the use of technology isn’t always monitored. The PoSH Act already prevents this kind of conduct; what most companies are missing isn’t the legal coverage, but the awareness to name it, look for it, and take it seriously the first time someone reports feeling watched rather than harassed.
To know more about building PoSH training and Internal Committee (IC) protocols that account for technology-enabled harassment, explore our PoSH compliance services or reach out to us at hello@serein.in.
