WASHINGTON, June 19 — A US banking giant fired more than a dozen employees for “simulating keyboard activity,” highlighting a battle within productivity-obsessed corporate...
The sackings by Wells Fargo come as employers use sophisticated tools on company-issued devices to monitor productivity in the age of hybrid work that took off after the Covid-19 pandemic. ― Reuters file picWASHINGTON, June 19 — A US banking giant fired more than a dozen employees for “simulating keyboard activity,” highlighting a battle within productivity-obsessed corporate America to tame a culture of faking work with gizmos such as mouse jigglers.
The cat-and-mouse game — no pun intended — has spurred a wider debate in corporate America about whether screentime and the click-clacking of keyboards are effective yardsticks to measure productivity amid a boom in remote work.The Well Fargo workers were dismissed last month following a probe of allegations involving “simulation of keyboard activity creating impression of active work,” Bloomberg reported, citing the company’s disclosures to financial regulators.
Such surveillance has given rise to what human resource professionals call “productivity theatre” — in which some employees seek to project that they are busy while doing nothing constructive. Among the hundreds of comments under the video, one viewer quipped: “At one point I taped a mouse to an oscillating fan — why couldn’t I have found sooner?”Another trick noted in the tutorials involves opening a notes application and placing a lock on any keyboard letter. The worker thereby appears active to tracking devices while the page fills up with row after row of the same letter.
He noted that he had installed a software-based jiggler, prompting some readers to suggest using “non detectable” physical ones.
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