A Canadian woman has been ordered by a court to compensate her former employer for "time theft" after she was caught red-handed by the software.
Note: Time theft is a term used to describe situations where an employee receives payment for time they did not actually work. This is considered stealing the company's time. Time theft occurs when an employee does not work when they are on the job, or is not at work when they are supposed to be.
Karlee Besse, who worked remotely as an accountant, initially claimed she was fired without cause last year and sought C$5,000 in damages.
But the company, Reach CPA, told the court that Beese had spent more than 50 hours on things unrelated to work. Reach said it installed employee tracking software, TimeCamp, on Besse's work laptop after discovering that her work was not being completed by deadlines, a strategy companies are increasingly taking in the age of remote work.
The software tracks how long a document is open, how the employee uses the document, and logs the time as work. Besse said he had been printing documents for work (so that's why he hadn't used the computer much). The company said the software also tracks printing - and found that few documents were registered as printed.
The court dismissed Besse's claim and ordered him to pay C$2,459 in damages to the company.
Sources: Vancouver Sun, Tech Slashdot
