A woman who was sacked after her boss tracked how much she typed worried she’d never find another job.
Working from home allows us many benefits, including no commute and the chance to put a load of washing on during lunch breaks.
For some people though, taking these regular breaks can impact their work output.
This is what happened to Insurance Australia Group (IAG) consultant Suzie Cheikho.
She’d been in her job for 18 years, but was let go for not doing enough work.
Her boss had used data from keystroke technology to track how much work she’d been doing.
The technology was employed after she had reportedly received a warning in 2022 about her work output. Cheikho was supposed to create insurance documents, hit regulatory timelines and keep an eye on ‘work from home compliance’.
But it appears as if she wasn’t doing as much as she should have once her keystroke data came through.
Cheikho’s work activity on 49 days between October and December 2022 were monitored. The review found that she started late on 47 days and finished early on 29 of the days when she was being monitored.
On four of the days she was found to have done no hours of work at all, and on the days when she was working she was accused of not doing very much.
She was pressing her keyboard 54 times an hour during the periods she was being monitored.
The woman had been given a warning in 2022 (Catherine Falls Commercial/Getty Images)
When confronted with this information, Cheikho said she did ‘not believe for a minute’ that the data generated by keystroke technology was accurate, telling her managers she had ‘never not worked’.
After the story went viral, the Aussie woman spoke to the MailOnline about her future job prospects.
“It’s embarrassing that this story has gone viral – nobody is going to hire me,” she said. “In 18 years of work there, I only ever got one warning.”
Describing herself as ‘confused and shocked’ at the data, she said personal issues had caused a decline in her mental health, which she believes impacted her work.
She said she informed her managers whenever she had to take time out of the working day to make a medical appointment and argued that she made up the time afterwards.
Cheikho went on to file an ‘unfair dismissal’ case against her former employer, one of the biggest insurance companies in Australia.
This was rejected, however, after it was judged that there was a ‘valid reason of misconduct’ as Australia’s Fair Work Commission (FWC) found that Cheikho had missed deadlines and meetings, been difficult to contact and had cost her employer a fine after failing to complete a task.