Tool allows company to ‘more accurately manage workflows, team capacity and performance,’ says VP
Last Friday, Toronto-Dominion Bank told employees in its financial crimes and risk management unit that it would be running productivity-tracking software on their work devices. The tool, WorkiQ by ActiveOps, tracks time spent on browsers, internal chat apps and meeting platforms.
According to Reuters, employees soon started asking questions about privacy, consent and whether the data would be used to performance manage them.
TD's associate VP of high-risk investigations, Deanna Pacitti, told staff the idea was to surface "pain points, where do we spend too much time?"
TD also told Reuters that this is standard practice across the industry: "In various parts of our business, we use automated solutions to improve insights and better allocate resources.
It also said the tool allows managers “to more accurately manage workflows, team capacity and performance. Where deployed, colleagues are informed about where they are used and for what purpose."
‘Decision intelligence’ software
Described as AI-powered “decision intelligence,” ActiveOps is a provider of workforce management solutions.
“Exploiting data to predict and prescribe decisions is critical for service operations,” it says on its website. “Imagine if every decision is consistently more accurate, timely and planned for. That’s millions of micro-gains every second of the day – at your leaders’ fingertips.”
TD’s monitoring efforts are not exclusive. JPMorgan began tracking keystrokes, video calls and meeting activity for junior investment bankers earlier this year, framing it as a wellbeing initiative, according to the Financial Times. Meta installed mouse-tracking software on US employees' computers to harvest data for AI training — but after backlash, it scaled the program back, according to Reuters.
Monitoring and privacy concerns
In response to TD employee questions about privacy, Pacitti said WorkiQ is “running in the background and it did go through privacy review.” The tool will not listen to conversations if employees are in a meeting, but will show if the employee is active, she said, according to Reuters. She also said the tool will capture the employee working in Excel, but will not track what they are doing in the spreadsheet application.
In 2022, the Ontario Employment Standards Act, 2000, was amended, requiring employers with 25 employees or more to have a written policy governing the electronic monitoring of employees. These policies must advise whether the employer is electronically monitoring its employees and describe how and when that monitoring occurs. It also must set out how the information gathered through the electronic monitoring will be used.
“Ensuring employees understand the legitimate work purposes behind surveillance and demonstrating that the most minimally-invasive methods are being used helps foster employee trust, improve worker motivation, and increase workplace satisfaction,” said Paulette Haynes, founder and managing officer of Haynes Law Firm in Toronto.
Return-to-office backdrop
The timing comes as TD along with other big employers in Canada such as RBC, BMO, Scotiabank and Rogers mandate at least four days a week in the office for most employees.
TD's own FAQ document told staff that WorkiQ would help managers "regain transparency lost in a remote work environment,” according to Reuters.
But some experts have doubts: “I'm not aware of any peer-reviewed scholarly work, or work otherwise, that shows how these applications improve the bottom line," Adam Molnar, assistant professor of sociology and legal studies at the University of Waterloo, said in discussing the impact of employee monitoring software with Canadian HR Reporter.
