If your boss found out you were getting someone to stamp your timesheet several hours before you actually came into work every day, that would be considered theft as well.
If she were on salary, it would be a different story, because exempt workers get paid for the job getting done, not the hours it takes.
But this pervasive electronic surveillance has to stop. The end result of all that is a lot worse than someone getting away with 50 hours of paid work they didn't actually do.
Not sure how much "AI" this TimeCamp software uses, if any, but it's quite easy to imagine a near-future world where some software says you didn't do the work you said you did, and you have no recourse, and the method the software uses to determine this is proprietary and secret, and no one really can explain how or why its AI draws the conclusions it makes anyway.
For a WFH desk job without real-time latency requirements, an hourly rate makes no sense at all to me.
If you think measurement is abusive now, wait till everything they do is tracked and monitored to determine _results_.
Sounds like she should have set something up to open and close documents automatically if none have been accessed for a certain period of time.
The existing companies that pull that crap ought to be reprimanded themselves. I worked for Gallup for a very short, very miserable tenure. When they casually mentioned that they had increased the number of completed surveys for a particular client required to meet quota simply because employees were meeting the quotas too easily, I got the heck out of there. The company was getting paid the same per survey by the client independent of how many surveys were completed per hour. They saw an opportunity to increase profits by decreasing bonus pay and away they went. It wasn't a one-off situation, it was SOP. I feel like I say this daily anymore, but there ought to be a law.
In doing so, I broke the half-sheet "contract" I had to sign requiring me to work for the company for at least 6 months under threat of lawsuit. Which is 110% unenforceable in my state and most others in the US. Didn't have to break the non-compete specifically, but it strongly reminds me of the way companies all over the country try to intimidate employees into staying in a crappy employment situation by making them sign scary, but completely unactionable contracts that the average employee is intended to mistake for a legitimate threat to their ability to provide for themselves and their families.
No, it's easy to tell when you lie about the number of hours spent in the office.
If the remote-working employees are not performing to the level you require (and it seems that this woman was not, which is why they turned on the tracking in the first place) you can tell them to improve or they're out.
I'm fine with software making the accusation, as long as software isn't able to override the accused's sworn testimony that the accusations are false.
She admitted on video that she misrepresented some working hours “by mistake.” That video was cited in the ruling.
[1] https://www.criminallegalnews.org/news/2021/sep/15/clash-bet...
"More than 700 Post Office managers were given criminal convictions after a new computer software system, built by the Japanese firm Fujitsu, wrongly showed money was going missing from individual branches between 2000 and 2014."
I don't think enough people are thinking about how small changes like these can cascade over time and become huge issues. After all, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
For more ideas, just think about the things that are worth between $0 and minimum wage to do, and pay people to do those things. Picking up trash on the side of the road for example.
Even though the best chess players in the world are computers, sports is more than just the pursuit of perfection. Imperfections are what make it interesting. Sports is about the story you can tell.
FTA:
"I've plugged time to files that I didn't touch and that wasn't right or appropriate in any way or fashion, and I recognize that and so for that I'm really sorry," Besse said in a meeting with her company, according to video cited in the ruling.She works as a CPA for an accounting firm—-there are several types of occupations like hers where time tracking isn’t just for her employers payroll, but very likely how the firm bills its clients. Similar professions would include: architects, lawyers, etc. A lot of software tools for these professions automatically log time expressly for the purpose of billing the client. Chief Architect, for example, presents a pop up asking if the time tracker should be paused if you’re idle for too long. Her timecard fraud isn’t just stealing from her employer, but very likely causing her employer to overcharge (ie steal from) their customers. The firm would almost certainly refund the fraudulent billings to their customers, (lest they lose the customer or worse—-get sued). The money recuperate from the fired employee is most likely being allocated for this.
Amusingly, SHE sued THEM first. They would have gone to great lengths to gather data, pay attorneys, etc to demonstrate that their termination of her was justifiable. Having already invested in their own exoneration, why wouldn’t they counter sue to mitigate their losses?
There's a business idea, develop a time tracking software that tracks if lawyers etc. are actually charging the correct time. Funnily enough while they are quite happy for their employees to use software like this, I seriously doubt they would agree to clients using the same software.
incorrect. exempt vs. non-exempt is a federal labor law term in the US.
https://www.flsa.com/coverage.html
exempt means you are exempt from the 1938 FLSA rules, which is when you earn above a certain salary or perform certain duties - manager vs. sales, etc. you are not guaranteed overtime pay (time-and-a-half, double on sundays), etc. non-exempt means subject to all the FLSA rules.
typically white color salaried jobs are exempt and hourly jobs are not but not always. due to the salary limits, there are jobs that are salaried that are non-exempt.
and salaried jobs are not always paid for getting the job done vs. hours. engineering firms (apparently accounting) and other firms that charge clients by the hour still require timekeeping by their salaried employees. mis-charging is worse than wage theft in this case it causes the firm to perpetrate fraud on the client.
many salaried firms have requirements for 40 hour minimum as well with or without timekeeping. if you're exempt you have less, not more, labor laws that apply. you can agree to a job that requires you to be in the office or online or whatever for 47 1/8 hours a week, and then if you don't do it, you can be fired just for that regardless of whether you got the job done.
the only point is to clarify that she may or may not be exempt, and may or may not have been hourly or salaried - any combination of these can still be required to work certain hours and keep time records.
> if she were on salary, it would be a different story
not really. you can still mis-charge on salary, which is extremely serious which is fraud and time-theft. and she clearly wasn't "getting the job done" either.
karma. i absolutely love this story because the company didn't even go after her for the lost time until in a genius move she sued them. it's pretty obvious she was a poor employee on a pip within less that a year of starting. and then, knowingly on a pip, still mis-charges, etc.?
A recent full-time contract of mine stated (slight paraphrase) "as a fulltime employee, you are required to devote all working hours to your position. Your working hours will typically be 9:30am-5pm, and you will be required to be reachable and ready to work during this time."