Wells Fargo fired over a dozen employees for "simulation of keyboard activity."

Employees were using productivity gadgets called "mouse jigglers."

Mouse jigglers are devices that make random, small motions of a mouse or touchpad, preventing devices from going to sleep during periods of inactivity. Workers who are away from their devices may use them to appear to be diligently working. Keystroke simulators are a similar type of device which instead simulate keyboard strokes.

Nearly four in 10 managers doubt the diligence of their remote employees. Another survey reported that over three-fourths of remote employees admitted to - at least sometimes - taking care of personal tasks during the workday.

Nonetheless, there is a perceptual gap resulting in mutual distrust between workers and employers: workers say they averaged 45 minutes or less of time spent on personal tasks, while employers estimated that more than half of remote employees are engaged in an hour or more of this "time theft" per day.

Only twenty percent of employees say that they have a high level of trust in their managers, but even worse, only twelve percent of managers have "full confidence" that their team is productive.

This distrust has led some corporations installing invasive software, termed "bossware" to monitor employee activity. Employees, in turn, keep up the "arms race" by using software to spoof diligence. Jeff Yang "Opinion: Bosses are striking back at workers who use mouse jigglers" cnn.com (Jun. 26, 2024).

So, the question for our readers is: Are Your Employees Using Mouse Jigglers?

Please take the poll. Here is the opinion of one of the McCalmon editorial staff:

Jack McCalmon, Esq.

We measure productivity here very differently. Specifically, is a project performed on time and does the quality of the work meet expectations? Monitoring keyboard use does not equate to productivity or quality. To answer the question, if people are monitoring "mouse jigglers", they are wasting their money.

You can answer our poll. Please note any comments provided may be shared with others.