Employees and their bosses are engaged in a cat-and-mouse game over the use of increasingly sophisticated technology to surveil workers and tools that get around them.

Remote work has become a mainstay across most industries following the COVID pandemic, particularly in the tech sector.

But this has led to concerns among employers over how to monitor their staff and ensure they remain productive.

The surge in “bossware” tools used to surveil remote workers has been matched by a rise in technology to fake productivity, primarily “mouse-mover” tools.

The tables may have turned again though, with employers now seemingly able to detect the use of these tools to fake productivity, and some workers already bearing the consequences.

Crackdown on mouse-movers

According to a Bloomberg report, American banking giant Wells Fargo last month sacked more than 12 employees after they were discovered to be using tech tools to fake productivity.

The report, based on “disclosures filed with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority”, said that the company fired “more than a dozen employees” due to the use of hardware or software to make it appear they were working on their computer when they were not.

In a statement, Wells Fargo said that it “does not tolerate unethical behaviour” from its staff and that the employees were “discharged after review of allegations involving simulation of keyboard activity creating the impression of active work”.

The story reveals that employers are now cognisant of the use of technology to bypass the surveillance of remote workers, and employees need to be aware of the risks and consequences of using such tactics.

This “mouse-mover” technology can come in the form of hardware or software.

The hardware involves an actual device being placed under the mouse to generate movement, while software apps can be programmed to automatically move the cursor at certain times to simulate a worker being at the desk.

These tools are now readily available for as little as $15.

One such hardware device, which would set you back $27, markets itself as “undetectable” as it “mimics normal user activity by moving your mouse and pausing intermittently”, with three different levels of activity available.

There are also several USBs for sale containing software that automatically moves a mouse, costing between $15 and $80.

But the bossware used by some employers to monitor their workers has become more sophisticated, and some are now able to spot the patterns associated with these supposedly “random” mouse movements.

A number of companies offering employee monitoring software now market themselves as able to detect these “mouse jigglers”, some through highly invasive techniques such as taking screenshots of a worker’s screen at random points to see what they are doing.

Employers will now need to balance the need to ensure their workers are being productive and not gaming the system, and the use of privacy-invading tactics that could see workers jumping ship to more respectful workplaces.

It could also spark a wider rethink of how productivity is measured and whether mouse activity is truly an accurate way of doing this.

The rise in ‘bossware’

According to research by ResumeBuilder.com based on a survey of 1,000 US-based companies, 96 per cent of remote-based employers are using some form of monitoring software.

And there’s a lot to choose from too, with separate research finding there are at least 500 “bossware” products on offer, with the employee computer monitoring software market expected to grow by $US488 million to $US1.7 billion by 2029.

There is also expected to be an increase in the usage of monitoring software, according to research by digital employee experience company 1E.

Their survey found that just under 80 per cent of companies not remotely monitoring their workers are planning to do so in the next year.

But these companies should expect significant backlash from their workers, with just under three-quarters of IT managers saying they would not be comfortable with ordering staff to deploy such tracking technology, and more than 70 per cent saying they would help their workers find workarounds.

Nearly 30 per cent of those surveyed who had implemented tracking said they saw an increase in people leaving due to this, while 27 per cent had issues in hiring new employees due to this.

In Australia, the Fair Work Commission late last year upheld the dismissal of an IAG employee in part due to a low number of keystrokes per hour, as identified by surveillance software.

The employee was found to average just 48.7 keystrokes per hour, and in some hours did not have any keystrokes at all.

The Fair Work Commission upheld their dismissal, saying that she was “not working as she was required to do during her designated working hours”.