Workers at some of Canada's biggest companies say increased workplace surveillance is taking a toll on their mental health as their employers ramp up the use of software that monitors their screen activity.
TD Bank told employees in its financial crimes and risk management team in June, in a call first reported by Reuters, that it will start tracking their screen time — specifically the time they spend on browsers, internal chat and meeting apps — using a tool called WorkiQ.
TD employees in other departments have raised concerns about this and other productivity tracking tools, saying they cause added stress and unease in the workplace.
"We are all very, very worried about what it's going to do," a TD employee in Edmonton told CBC News.
Companies across a range of industries are increasingly facing pushback from employees over the deployment of software that monitors screen activity. The practice has raised questions about privacy, trust, workers' rights and workplace stress.
In June, Meta paused a program that tracked employees' keystrokes and mouse movements amid concerns about data privacy and staff backlash, including a petition signed by 1,600 employees.
The TD employee, who CBC News has agreed not to name because she fears she could lose her job for speaking out, said she worries the new monitoring tools will come to her workplace soon.
Her managers currently use ControliQ, she said, which is made by ActiveOps, the same U.K.-based company behind WorkiQ. ControliQ tracks time spent on tasks, but not granular details like keystrokes and mouse movements.
Introduced about two years ago, the tool is increasingly used to "shame and belittle" workers by displaying and comparing their "productivity" metrics at meetings, the employee said.
TD Bank customer on the hook for $15K after account hacked: CBC's Marketplace Cheat Sheet
Bosses also use "Active" and "Away" status on Microsoft Teams to gauge work activity, she said, even though much of the work she does requires reading documents and other tasks not reflected by screen time.
As this type of monitoring ramps up, the employee — who has been with the company for eight years — said she and her colleagues are feeling burnout, frustration and "extreme unease."
"It's going to start impacting colleagues, because there's a lot of stuff that we do in our day that isn't recordable or isn't quote-unquote productive, but it's necessary work," she said.
"We run the risk of losing bonuses, losing raises, losing performance ratings — that sort of thing. And then we run a risk of getting written up, and eventually, possibly, losing our jobs."
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