A Canadian woman has been ordered to pay back her company thousands after she was accused of “time theft” recorded by tracking software installed on her work computer.
Remote worker Karlee Besse had been an accountant for Reach CPA in British Columbia and initially tried to sue the company herself for $5,000 in unpaid wages and severance pay, citing wrongful termination.
But he must pay $2,498.89 in back wages after a civil court ruled in favor of the company.
It was revealed in court that Reach CPA had used TimeCamp on Besse’s computer after discovering that his work was over-budget and behind schedule. The software tracks how employees spend their time including how long documents are open and how they use them.
The company claimed that the tracking proved that Besse had spent 50 hours of non-work related tasks on the company’s time and said that they “identified irregularities among them. [Besse’s] timesheets and software usage logs.”
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Besse defended himself saying that he had printed a hard copy of what he had been working on, so the software failed to implement it. He also said he didn’t tell the employee because he “knew they didn’t want to hear it.”
But the company says the software is also linked to the printer and monitors little printing activity. In addition, he added that the work done on the print-out should be input into the company’s software which does not happen.
Besse also raised concerns that the software could not distinguish between personal and work use, but the company showed in court that the software does this automatically and separates time logs from activities such as movie and TV streaming.
Besse admitted several acts of dishonesty when he was confronted according to a video meeting between him and Reach in which he was informed that he had “dedicated time to a file that I did not touch and was not correct or inappropriate in any way. … and for that I apologize “.
Following the rise of working from home during and after the pandemic, companies are increasingly monitoring their workers in ways that go beyond the capabilities of software such as TimeCamp.
In 2021, a survey by Digital.com of 1,250 US employers found that 60% of remote employees used work monitoring software. Almost nine out of 10 of these companies say they have fired employees after using the software.
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