Woman ordered to repay employer after software shows ‘time theft’

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.inc.com&#x2F;melanie-curtin&#x2F;in-an-8-hour-day-the-average-worker-is-productive-for-this-many-hours.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.inc.com&#x2F;melanie-curtin&#x2F;in-an-8-hour-day-the-aver...</a><p>Considering that your average employee in the US (and it’s safe to assume that numbers in Canada are similar) is productive for less than 3 hours in your average 8 hour work day, this is kind of ridiculous. If you’re paying a consultant, sure you want to get an hour work for an hour pay but an employee?<p>Reach CPA can consider this a win short term but I anticipate they’ll be out of business in 3 years or less. They’ll lose employees and nobody is going to apply to replace them. Seems like a stupidly small amount of money to alienate your present and future workforce over to me.<p>Edit: not to mention that this is a cowardly and badly broken way to “manage” employees. An effective manager would have actually managed her and counseled her on what the company expected. Instead they went the chicken shit route of management, didn’t work with her and instead used tech to look for excuses to fire her. This company needs to go down in flames. If you can’t be bothered to manage your employees, you shouldn’t be in business. Period.

Does that mean employees can sue their ex employers for wage-theft if they can plausibly show they e.g. worked extra hours without compensation? Or is this one of those cases where it only works one-way?

For people who aren&#x27;t reading the article:<p>* She was not performing well at work: behind schedule, over budget, etc<p>* Her company started having weekly meetings with her to address this<p>* After five months of this, they installed monitoring software, with her permission.<p>* The monitoring software showed she was not working the hours she was reporting<p>* She admitted to falsifying her time sheets: &quot;Clearly, it’s, I’ve plugged hours that I shouldn’t have plugged to files um when I wasn’t working on them and like, I can’t hide that&quot;<p>* They fired her - quite reasonably: the person isn&#x27;t achieving the expected performance, and on top of that is falsifying their time sheets.<p>* She then sued them for unfair dismissal, and they produced the documentation of the above, including the fraud, and the court ordered she repay the company.<p>For people who think that the company is in the wrong: what should they have done instead?<p>Similarly for the court: a person brings a suit saying they were wrongfully dismissed, and the evidence shows not only were they underperforming, documented as underperforming, the employer had made the person aware they were underperforming, the employer was trying to get the employee to the expected level of performing, and on top of that she has admitted to falsifying some time sheets, and the company has even more documentation demonstrating that the employee was falsifying them in bulk. Despite that the company is now having to spend money defending themselves against a clearly false claim in court.

You would not want to work in a company that install software to track you. You cannot be overly efficient in a company that does not appreciate it. You do not want to make up hours you did not work. You want to have good communication with your boss&#x2F;employees. I cannot see anyone wanting to work for that company.

&gt; Reach said it installed employee-tracking software called TimeCampon Besse’s work laptop <i>after it found her assigned files were over budget and behind schedule</i><p>IMO, that phrase is key. It&#x27;s horrible to do this kind of thing to all of your employees as a matter of course, but I don&#x27;t see an issue with doing it on an individual basis to specific employees who aren&#x27;t getting their work done.

So the employer from TFA that no sane person would never ever want to work for is Reach CPA. I’m making a mental note to never, under any circumstance, do any business with Reach CPA. I wonder what Reach CPA employees think about this whole situation. TBH I would rather be unemployed than work for Reach CPA. The thought of working for Reach CPA actually gives me anxiety. Reach CPA is not a company I would ever want to be associated with.

What is an over budget file?

This reminds me of the British post office software debacle that sent innocent workers to prison for fraud. Software doesn&#x27;t prove anything, it burden of proof should be on the prosecution to prove that the software works. Also the defence should have the right to a 3rd party audit

Future historians are gonna look back at this time and wonder.<p>A once in a century pandemic leading to a unique situation where workers, finally, after decades, had power over employers, and those workers used it to fight for remote work? Remote work that reduced their pay, reduced their advantages over people from countries with worse labor protections making them cheaper, transferred costs from the employers, to the employees, reduced chances of the workers building industry connections that would potentially allow them to apply for new jobs, etc?<p>The real problem workers faced was bad commutes. Instead of fighting for better commutes, they decided to fight to make themselves increasingly disposable and pick up an increasing amount of the costs of working.