After two weeks of working from her Brooklyn apartment, a 25-year-old e-commerce worker received a staffwide email from her company: Employees were to install software called Hubstaff immediately on their personal computers so it could track their mouse movements and keyboard strokes, and record the webpages they visited.
They also had to download an app called TSheets to their phones to keep tabs on their whereabouts during work hours.
“There are five of us. And we always came to work. We always came on time. There was no reason to start location-tracking us,” the woman told NPR. She spoke on the condition of anonymity, fearing she could lose her job.
Company emails that she provided to NPR show her employer believed the tracking software would improve the team’s productivity and efficiency while everyone was working from home.