2023-08-09 23:34:28
A large insurance company used keystroke-monitoring technology on an employee’s laptop to check if she was working her scheduled hours…and it ended horribly wrong for her.
After being fired on February 20, Suzie Cheikho, who according to her LinkedIn profile lives in New South Wales, Australia, filed an unfair dismissal complaint with the Fair Work Commission (FWC), but it was dismissed. .
According to findings released by the commission, Ms Cheikho was responsible at Insurance Australia Group (IAG) for creating insurance documents, meeting regulatory deadlines and monitoring “work from home compliance”, between other important functions.
Ironically, his own work-from-home performance marked the end of his 18-year career with the company.
According to the FWC’s findings, Ms. Cheikho was terminated on February 20 for missing deadlines and meetings, being absent and unreachable, and failing to complete a task that led the industry regulator to impose a fine to his employer.
A month later, Ms Cheikho told the FWC that her employer had a ‘premeditated plan to keep her out of the business and that she was being targeted because of her mental health issues’.
According to findings online, Ms Cheikho received a formal warning in November 2022 about her performance and was placed on a performance improvement plan, the New York Post reports.
She underwent a detailed review of her cyber activity, which analyzed the number of times she physically pressed her keyboard over 49 working days, from October to December.
The review revealed that she had not worked for 44 days, had started 47 days late, had finished early 29 days and had worked no hours for 4 days.
Photo taken from LinkedIn | Suzie Cheikho
On the days she logged in, she had “very low keystroke activity” and recorded no keystrokes for 117 hours in October, 143 hours in November, and 60 hours in December.
She performed an average of 54 keystrokes per hour for the duration of the surveillance, which shows that she was not showing up for work and not performing the tasks requested.
At a formal meeting about the review, Ms Cheikho said she “not for a minute” believed the data was true.
“Sometimes the workload is a bit slow, but I never stopped working,” she assured her superiors, according to the FWC’s findings.
In a written response, Ms. Cheikho explained that she had looked at the data to find an explanation for the missing hours, but really could not remember why or how the number of missing hours was so high.
“I went through a lot of personal issues that led to a decline in my mental health and unfortunately I think it affected my performance and my work,” she mentioned.
Ms Cheikho also explained that she always started on time, but that she had had “some problems” due to an injury.
FWC vice-chairman Thomas Roberts said evidence showed Ms Cheikho ‘did not work as she was required to during her designated working hours’ when under supervision.
He found that Ms. Cheikho had not been able to provide a credible explanation for the irregularities in her data.
“Applicant was terminated for just cause of misconduct,” wrote Mr. Roberts, who also pointed out that in his view there was little likelihood “that the factors underlying the Applicant’s disconnection from his work was serious and real.”
As Ms. Cheikho had been with the company for many years, Mr. Roberts deplores the dismissal, but has no doubt that “the Applicant’s dismissal was not severe, unjust or unreasonable.”
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