Should employers monitor more than mouse clicks of remote staff?

US bank Wells Fargo this month said it had fired more than a dozen staff after an internal investigation found employees were simulating keyboard activity to create the impression of “active work”.

It is unclear what these workers were doing exactly. But since the pandemic moved office-based work into homes, sales of so-called mouse jigglers and other devices aimed at emulating work have surged.

Part of this is in response to some large companies using their own tech tools to monitor employees’ work, such as tracking clicks on keyboards and searches on websites.

Such devices are usually deployed in workplaces where there is little trust between bosses and their employees and a tendency to think that only the things that can be measured can be managed. Tight surveillance of staff only encourages them to game the system.

But there are broader questions that still need to be asked on workplace etiquette outside of the office. For example, should staff be taking legally sensitive calls from a co-working space? How about taking a hands-free team call while driving to the post office? Would your employer be responsible if there was a crash? Another issue is whether employers should be concerned not just about staff productivity but also their ability to switch off.

UK housing company Aster Group commissioned a study to understand how employees felt about hybrid working. It found that while its staff liked to get life admin done during the working day, they felt endlessly torn between their domestic and work responsibilities. The pressure was often leading to overwhelmed, distracted and burnt out workers.

“People are attempting to ‘do it all’ due to the absence of socially embedded boundaries,” said the authors of the research by BiBO Studio, a consultancy that designs sustainable places. “Switching between activities comes at a cost — multitasking can seem efficient, but in fact this interrupts our ‘flow’, means we pay less attention to the task at hand, we are less productive, more distracted, and are not in complete control.”

Academics are now suggesting managers step in to help employees manage the cadence of their homeworking day. “If people are using their break to do the school run, are they actually having a break?,” said Harriet Shortt, associate professor of organisation studies at Bristol Business School, who conducted the work for BiBO.

She suggests managers should encourage their teams to think about how they can appropriately separate work and personal responsibilities to avoid being derailed or distracted, or becoming resentful of their living rooms turning into office space. “Maybe managers can think about how they can encourage employees to record their behaviour in order that they can shift how they work,” she adds. The hope is that if staff write down exactly what they are doing and when, they may be better at self regulating and managers may be able to intervene when necessary.

Aster said its motive was to improve its employees’ wellbeing. Others might suggest that asking what domestic tasks are filling their working day is a type of surveillance. If a manager was to suggest when staff might do their laundry or weekly grocery shop, they would no doubt face accusations of overstepping the mark.

In any case, how many employees would be truly honest in any disclosures? More importantly, would bosses — many of whom already have expanded roles and are increasingly managing the mental wellbeing of staff — be willing to add more to their plate?

The latest news from Wells Fargo will have triggered managers who already feared that staff working from home were slacking. And there are times when managers do need to step in, for example if they believe staff are “quiet vacationing” — or taking time off without telling their boss.

But what is more likely is that employees are making the most of the “in-between moments” of the working day, while getting their work done.

Most companies have been clear about basic remote working guidelines, laying out expected working hours; how staff should collaborate, communicate or record their decision-making; how they should store data and what their legal rights are should they choose to work from home.

But with hybrid work here to stay, it is becoming more likely that managers will need to get more involved in the personal lives of their employees, willingly or unwillingly.