While privacy regulations like the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) have imposed comprehensive restrictions around the ways businesses treat consumer data, they are leaving employee information relatively untouched.

Times, though, may be changing. Following a one-year moratorium, employee data will officially fall subject to the protections afforded other types of personal data under the forthcoming California Consumer Protection Act (CCPA). The switch could potentially trigger a whole new set of complications for employers making use of advanced technologies to track employee productivity in the office.

Jarno Vanto, a partner at Crowell & Morning, expects that some companies will have to rethink that strategy.

"I think that's going to force companies to rethink how they are using those tools. They might be moving away from more personally identifying stuff to more aggregate tracking," Vanto said.

While the CCPA doesn't officially kick in until January, many of those tracking tools—aggregate or not—have already arrived. An article published by USA Today earlier this month claimed that by 2020, 80% of businesses will be monitoring employees "using a range of tools and data sources."

Examples range from the simple (email account log-in times) to more advanced applications like the use of web cams to track an employee's facial expressions. And as of right now, most of those activities are probably in the clear depending on what state an employer calls home.

Christopher Ballod, a partner at Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith, indicated that in the U.S. there has typically been a recognition that employee data is different from other types of personal information. That, coupled with the fact that employees are typically using an employer's resources to accomplish their work, tends to give a company a great deal of latitude.

"The key to understanding how the law is going to work here is that privacy and employment are real different concepts, and as an employee you're giving up a whole lot of rights," Ballod said.

Still, California workers are due to get some of those rights back once the clock runs out on the CCPA's one-year exemption on employee information.

When that happens, Vanto thinks employers may be forced to limit the scope of their tracking tools to an aggregate rather than person-by-person view. For example, instead of facial recognition tech being used to decipher the mood of one John Doe, it could be leveraged as a more general barometer of morale officewide.

Meanwhile, employers scattered across other states in the country shouldn't expect to see a uniform national standard on the books any time soon. Myriah Jaworski, an attorney with Beckage, expects that in the future, the processing of employee data will continue to be regulated piecemeal by local employment laws.

"[Employers] will have a host of legal obligations to sort through regarding employee privacy," Jaworski said.

Still, there's a chance that yet another set of patchwork laws to contend with may not come as such a burden to companies. Whereas the emergence of various jurisdictional privacy regulations was a relatively new obstacle for businesses to contend with, employment laws are a more familiar consideration.

"Employment law is by its nature inherently state specific," Vanto said. "So it could be that [companies] give broader rights in California versus, say, their Texas employees."