The US bank Wells Fargo has fired more than a dozen workers for alleged “simulation of keyboard activity”, in an apparent attempt to fool their employer into thinking they were working.
The employees were “discharged after review of allegations involving simulation of keyboard activity creating impression of active work”, according to a filing with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.
The filing, reported by Bloomberg, does not disclose whether the staff in question were using home or office computers.
Wells Fargo indicates on its website that it embraces flexible working, stating that many of its corporate roles give staff the opportunity to “work from home on some days and at the office on others”.
A company spokesperson said: “Wells Fargo holds employees to the highest standards and does not tolerate unethical behaviour.”
Devices or software used to simulate computer mouse activity, known as mouse movers or mouse jigglers, are widely available on Amazon for less than £10, and many of them claim that they are “undetectable”.
Designed to prevent computers from entering sleep mode, the devices work by placing the mouse on a platform or disc that rotates to imitate normal movement, while the software runs a program that moves a mouse around.
Just over a quarter of paid working days in the US last month were work-from-home days, according to WFH Research, which surveys 20- to 64-year-olds. The pre-Covid figure was 5%, according to WFH, which is run by academics from a group of universities in the US and Mexico.
Major banks have been among the employers taking a tough approach on working from home. In January, Bank of America sent “letters of education” to staff threatening disciplinary action over failure to show up at the office, while Goldman Sachs said in a memo to staff last year that it encouraged employees to “work in the office five days a week”.
Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JP Morgan, told the Economist last year that employees who did not want to commute to the office could find a job elsewhere.
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“I completely understand why someone doesn’t want to commute an hour and a half every day, totally got it. Doesn’t mean they have to have a job here either,” he said.
The issue of workplace monitoring became more prominent during the Covid epidemic, which triggered a wave of work-from-home orders around the world. In 2020, Microsoft apologised for using software that singled out individuals and assigned them a “productivity score” based on emails sent and meetings attended.
Last year the British thinktank the Institute for Public Policy Research called workplace surveillance “dystopian”, claiming that it disproportionately targeted minorities as well as female and younger workers.
Jennifer Abruzzo, the general counsel of the US National Labour Relations Board, said in a 2022 memo that she was worried about keystroke monitoring software being used by some employers in order to discourage workers from unionising.
