06/19/2024 – 14:57
Wells Fargo bank recently fired a dozen employees in the United States for “simulating activities on the computer keyboard”, an example of the willingness of some productivity-obsessed companies to discover pitfalls in the era of teleworking.
Some companies adopt techniques that allow them to detect whether an employee is simulating work and use sophisticated “tattleware” instruments or surveillance software to do so.
These tools, whose demand has exploded since the pandemic, are installed on company computers and control employee productivity by monitoring their workplace, keyboard activity or even through geolocation.
A Florida-based marketing company had installed a program on its computers that takes screenshots every 10 minutes to monitor its employees’ activity, according to Harvard Business Review magazine.
Some workers, who seek to avoid these types of devices, resort to other tools, which simulate, for example, the movement of the mouse to prevent the computer from going into sleep mode. The goal: to appear active in the eyes of bosses even if they are involved in other activities not associated with their work.
– Technological fight –
Tutorials on TikTok or YouTube teach you how to appear artificially active through, for example, fake PowerPoint presentations for “when you need a nap.”
“Click on ‘slideshow’ and everything will work”, guarantees Sho Dewan, an influencer who introduces himself as “a former recruiter who shares the secrets of companies’ Human Resources, in a TikTok video with millions of views.
Another frequently shared tip: open a writing program and place an object to press a key. The page is filled thousands of times with the same character, but the employee appears active.
However, the most popular instrument is the one that allows you to move the mouse and can be purchased for 11 dollars (approximately R$58 at the current price).
“Press the button when you get up from your desk and the cursor will move randomly across the screen, for hours if necessary,” says one user in an Amazon review of the product.
However, the risk of being discovered is significant.
In a post on the social network Reddit, an employee says that he was fired when his coordinator discovered that he was using a mouse movement simulator.
When noticing that software was used to simulate this movement, some internet users suggest in the comments that they use a physical and material object that moves the mouse in an “undetectable” way.
– Cat and mouse –
Some human resources professionals consider that this game of cat and mouse has generated the multiplication of “productivity staging”, which leads employees to pretend, even in a theatrical way, their activity.
In research cited by Harvard Business Review, some companies highlight that secretly monitoring their employees can be dangerous for employers.
“We found that supervised employees are much more likely to take breaks without consultation, damage office property, steal materials and deliberately work slower” than those who are not subject to this type of practice, according to the magazine.
For AJ Mizes, director of a labor consultancy company, the use of activity simulators demonstrates the existence of a “work culture focused much more on performance indicators than on constructive productivity and human relations”.
“Instead of encouraging innovation and trust, this approach to surveillance will do nothing more than drive employees to find new ways to appear busy,” said the executive, criticizing a “worrying trend of excessive surveillance.”
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