Teleworking: what is keyboard fraud, this activity that gives business leaders the shivers ?

Simulating an activity on your computer while doing something else, or “keyboard cheating”. Illustration Envato @YuriArcursPeopleimages – Yuri Arcurs peopleimages.com

With summer and the democratization of teleworking, employers fear “keyboard fraud”, a phenomenon which even recently pushed a large company to dismiss several employees who had simulated their activity. Explanations.

While in the imagination of many business leaders, teleworking is still associated with a drop in productivity, the development of remote activity has notably enabled the ;arrival of new dishonest practices, such as "keyboard fraud".

As reported by Le Figaro, it’s this "scam" which pushed Wells Fargo, a large American bank, to fire around ten employees, who had simulated the activity of the keyboard of their computer, to make it appear that they were working.

To catch its fraudulent employees, the bank, like other large companies, had put in place systems which track the activity of employees and which therefore study the ;mouse and keyboard activity during their working time.

Crisis of confidence

But faced with this crisis of confidence, employees have found solutions to circumvent spyware. The aim of keyboard fraud is therefore indeed the following: to make people believe that we are working, while we are doing something completely different. And to do this, nothing could be easier since with the rise of teleworking, lots of online tutorials have flourished to deceive possible spyware.

Indulging in this type of practice remains very risky. On the other hand, the increase in keyboard fraud, as well as the democratization of monitoring of the activity of teleworking employees, reveals a crisis of confidence in the world of work. A survey cited by Harvard Business Review and taken up by 20 Minutes reveals, for example, that "the monitored employees were well more likely to take unapproved breaks, damage office property, steal equipment, and deliberately work at a slow pace.

Proof that performance is not measured by the number of clicks on a mouse or the number of letters typed on a keyboard.