Is it time up for 'mouse movers'?

In a recently decided case in the Canadian Civil Resolution Tribunal, Miss Besse was ordered to pay Reach (her ex-employer) $2,756.89 for ‘time theft’.

Miss Besse initially brought the claim because she said Reach terminated her contract without just cause and argued she was entitled to more than $5,000 in unpaid wages and severance pay. Reach argued that Miss Besse engaged in ‘time theft’. They denied owing her unpaid wages or severance pay, and counterclaimed for $2,603.07 being the wages they identified as amounting to time theft and what was left of an advance paid when she began her employment.

Miss Besse worked remotely from home as an accountant. Reach installed a time-tracking programme (TimeCamp) on Miss Besse’s work laptop. Around five months into her employment, Reach identified a few of Miss Besse’s files which were ‘over-budget and behind schedule’. This prompted them to check the data from TimeCamp where they identified discrepancies between her timesheets and the software’s usage logs which recorded, for example, when and for how long documents were open and being edited. Their conclusion was that she had been recording time on certain files but, according to the software, had not actually done the work. Miss Besse had explanations for the discrepancies, including that she would often print documents out and work from them manually, but TimeCamp’s extensive tracking abilities (which included data on whether the document had in fact been printed) undermined her position.

The Tribunal therefore found that Reach had just cause for terminating Miss Besse’s employment for time theft and that they were entitled to compensation of $1,506.34 for the unaccounted hours portion of their counterclaim (and $1,250.55 for the advance).

Case comment

This is an interesting case from another jurisdiction about the advancement of technology in this area. It is worth noting that the Tribunal preferred the evidence (on the balance of probabilities) which the employer could provide from TimeCamp over that of the employee personally.

Time recording software is common in various industries in the UK such as law and accounting and there is nothing inherently ‘wrong’ with monitoring employees’ productivity in this way. In our previous blog, we considered some of the pitfalls of doing so. However for some industries, certain types of monitoring such as time recording might be important for risk management and demonstrating value for money. 

With more people working from home or in a hybrid environment post-pandemic, it is possible that more employers will deploy, or consider deploying, some kind of monitoring software; whether that be time recording or keeping tabs on internet use, calendar use, keyboard strokes etc. With that being the case, it would be reasonable to expect claims of a similar kind to reach the UK employment tribunals in the near future.

If you would like to discuss the legality of monitoring employees, please get in touch with our specialist Employment Team.