Cognizant takes step to monitor employees, laptops will be monitored and marked inactive after 5 minutes break
Cognizant is reportedly cracking down on its employees with strict monitoring systems. Now, employees can be marked as ‘inactive’ if there is no activity on the laptop for 5 minutes. The company will use a tool called ProHance to implement it incrementally.
Cognizant is reportedly introducing a new monitoring system to track employee activity on company-issued laptops and PCs. According to Mint, select employees are being introduced to workforce-management tools like Prohance, which monitor mouse and keyboard usage to measure productivity. These steps, initiated about a month ago, highlight the increasing focus on micro-tracking.
The monitoring system logs inactivity based on set metrics. The report states that if an employee does not perform any keyboard or mouse activity for more than 300 seconds (5 minutes) he or she will be marked as “inactive.” Additionally, if an employee’s PC or laptop remains idle for 15 minutes, the employee will be marked as engaged in “off-system activities.” According to the report, the rollout of the new monitoring systems will vary from team to team.
Cognizant will not use this data for performance evaluation
A major concern with such levels of tracking is the possibility of performance evaluation. However, Cognizant has clarified that the company will not use this data for any such purpose. Rather, the company seems to be focused on understanding any inefficiencies. A Cognizant spokesperson was quoted by Mint as saying, “We occasionally use various productivity measurement tools, a common industry practice, at customer request, in select business process management or seamless operations and automation projects. The purpose is to help customers better understand process steps and related time metrics to assess process design inefficiencies.”
Cognizant won’t be the only company to use tools like Prohance to track employee activity. Even companies like Wipro use this tool.
Cognizant claims tracking is subject to consent
Cognizant claims that employees will be tracked through Prohance only after giving consent to the new tool. However, some officers have claimed that the course to learn Prohance was mandatory as part of the training curriculum. The course covers a range of metrics, including productive hours, time spent per task, and time logged on specific applications. “We received a mandatory course, which involves user acceptance. We had to click ‘I agree’ to complete the course,” one person told Mint.
The report states that the reason behind the increased tracking is to ensure that employees are working a certain number of hours despite breaks. Cognizant and its customers reportedly want to achieve greater productivity, and micro-tracking could provide a clearer picture.
