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Working from home has come into the spotlight recently with the bank Wells Fargo firing more than a dozen employees after claims they were pretending to work by simulating keyboard activity in a bid to get around productivity trackers.
Employees fired for lack of ethics
The workers, who were all employed in the company’s investment and wealth management department, were fired last month after investigations suggested they were moving their laptop computer mouse and using other simulation tools to create the impression they were working. Such methods prevent computers from entering sleep mode; however, the simulation was picked up by the firm’s tracking.
This is an extreme example of how surveillance technology is being used to assess everything we do in our lives. From a CCTV drain survey Leicester by a company such as https://www.wilkinson-env.co.uk/drainage-services-cctv-surveys-midlands/cctv-drain-surveys/cctv-drain-surveys-leicester/ to government national surveillance cameras, everything people do in their daily lives is more actively monitored than at any other point in history.
For the Wells Fargo employees, their actions resulted in them being fired. Wells Fargo has provided very little detail about the incident; however, it has said that it holds its workforce to the highest standards of professionalism and accountability, including ethical behaviour.
The challenge with homeworking
The banking industry was one of the first to actively embrace homeworking during the COVID-19 pandemic, closing a huge number of branches as financial services providers moved their services online.
Concerns over productivity are growing, with these concerns being echoed across a variety of white-collar industries as the UK attempts to improve its poor productivity record in the wake of the pandemic and its restrictions.
The question for businesses now, not only within the financial services industry, is whether home-working employees can maintain their level of productivity and be as engaged as those who work in offices.
Remote monitoring systems might catch workers out for lack of effort, but they also signal broader issues around engagement and motivation. These are issues that must be resolved if homeworking is to continue at its current level.
