A court forces an employee to compensate her former company for lost time
When Canadian accountant Carly Pace is fired for being unproductive at her job, she finds herself facing off not only with her former employer, but also with her workers' time-tracking software.
As a result, a civil court, part of Canada's judicial system, ruled that Pace owed her former company $2,756 after software installed on her laptop revealed she had abused more than 50 hours of work.
Pace worked remotely at Reach CPA, an accounting firm based in British Columbia, Canada.
The row began last year when Pace claimed she had been fired without "just cause".
But the employer argued that Bess was fired because she was "stealing time."
Company sources said, according to NPR, that they gathered evidence using TimeCamp, a time-tracking program that records which files an employee accesses and how much time they spend on each.
The records showed a discrepancy of 50 hours between what Pace reported as work time and what the program recorded as work activity.
While Pace argued that she found the program difficult to use and that she spent time on paper documents as well, it was found that the program also tracks these activities by tracking employee typing activity, in addition to monitoring active work time and general production.
In a video filed with the court, the company showed that TimeCamp is able to record when and for how long employees have accessed work-related documents, and discriminate — based on electronic track — from when they have been in non-work locations, such as livestreams.
In the end, a court rejected Bess's arguments, ruling that she had 30 days to pay her former employer fifty unproductive hours for unaccounted hours and other associated costs.
An increasing number of companies are using technology to monitor their employees while they are working from home.
While employers see it as a tool to ensure worker inaction and improve efficiency, workers and privacy advocates say this type of tracking is intrusive and heralds the return of workplace surveillance even when people return to the office.
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