AI makes employee monitoring cheaper, more granular and continuous. Lower costs can push firms to overuse controls without weighing consequences. Research shows monitoring can erode trust, cut performance and raise turnover among experienced staff. It can still provide useful structure for less experienced workers. Leaders should make every control justify its costs. They should match monitoring intensity to employees’ skills and needs. They should resist adding surveillance just because AI makes it inexpensive. Effective firms will treat controls as tools to test and refine. They will not use them as substitutes for better strategy, hiring, training or leadership.