The epidemic may have freed us from the confines of the five-day-a-week office schedule. However, America’s busy-work culture is becoming increasingly difficult to break free from.
See here: Bloomberg reported this week that Wells Fargo dismissed more than a dozen employees for “simulation of keyboard activity,” citing filings with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.
In other words, they were faking employment, possibly with a mouse jiggler that costs $20 online.
These devices, which keep your screen active and move your mouse in convincingly unpredictable ways, gained popularity during the early days of the pandemic. With employees no longer crowded together under fluorescent lights, eating sad desk salads, managers now had to question if their teams were genuinely working or slacking off.
Even though most employees indicated they were more productive at home, many executives used “bossware” to monitor their employees’ laptops. (To be fair, we did occasionally move away to tend to our own personal business, such as walking the dog or staring out the window while contemplating our mortality. We hope you will forgive us.
At any rate, several bankers at Wells Fargo appear to have been caught last month. It’s unclear whether they were working from home or on the beach, or what they were doing instead of working. A bank representative declined to provide any information regarding the firings, stating only that “Wells Fargo holds employees to the highest standards and does not tolerate unethical behavior.”
I have two instant thoughts.
• Oh, come on, the highest standard? (More on it in a moment).
• Four years into this remote/hybrid experiment, and some bosses still haven’t worked out how to treat their employees as grownups.
“The sad part is that employees feel the need to purchase and use a mouse jiggler,” says Ashley Herd, creator of Manager Method, a management training organization. “And that’s a symptom of a much larger problem.”
Given Wells Fargo’s history, managerial skepticism is understandable.
Since 2016, Wells has spent billions of dollars settling civil and criminal charges stemming from a multiyear scheme that resulted in more than 2 million fake accounts being opened without customers’ consent or knowledge — a practice that began when managers began setting unrealistic sales targets for employees.
Last year, the former head of the bank’s retail unit was sentenced to three years probation, and the bank’s former CEO was barred from the industry.
Since then, Wells has been working to improve its internal culture while also repairing its brand. It’s easy to see why it would want to keep close eyes on its approximately 200,000 employees.
Because the business is so heavily regulated, banks, in particular, maintain severe controls on work-issued gadgets.
However, firing people over mouse movers may not be the most effective method to promote a culture of trust and inclusiveness.
“Managers often assume the worst when they see someone’s away, and so they’re looking for any type of data to show that that’s true,” Herd explains. “So, team members are going to innovate around that.”
