Commonwealth Bank isn’t the only company tracking employees on computers and phones

The revelation that the Commonwealth Bank (CBA) is digitally tracking its workforce sparked a lot of anger, but an astonishing 90 per cent of Australian employers do the same.

The bank, which made $5.15 billion in profit in the second half of 2022, uses the “Navigate” app to track its staff’s online activity and how often they spend time at their computers.

The pandemic led to a large number of Australians working from home, along with a corresponding explosion of companies using technology for employee monitoring.

A report from a law firm Herbert Smith Freehills said nine out of ten Australian businesses use monitoring software on their computers and phones – the global average is around 80 percent.

“They put this stuff on your computer and you don’t really realize it,” Professor Peter Holland of Melbourne’s Swinburne University told the Daily Mail Australia.

“It’s pretty endemic in the workplace right now… that they track the movement of your mouse or they take snapshots of you on the computers to see if you’re actually on the site doing your job.”

Monitoring keyboard usage, typing, mouse movement, and location tracking is benignly marketed as a measure of productivity and efficiency.

But Prof. Holland wondered what purpose such surveillance serves.

‘Do (companies) really have to do this? What are you trying to achieve? What are your concerns and have you discussed this with your employees?’ he said.

The Finance Sector Union (FSU), which has many members among the CBA’s 48,000 employees, has similar questions about the bank’s use of the Navigate app.

Navigate is described on both the Google and Apple app sites as “CBA Group’s employee workplace application,” although not all employees use it.

“The information we collect has been helpful in ensuring that our people stay in touch about the different ways of working we support at CBA or, for example, to record the right type of leave when our employees take time off or are off” , a bank spokesman said The Australian.

“This has been especially helpful during and after Covid as people have returned to the office, helping us better manage space in our offices.”

But FSU National Secretary Julia Angrisano has a very different take on the banking giant’s Navigate app.

“Employees at the Commonwealth Bank are concerned about reports that they are being monitored and spied on by the bank through a system that would measure their computer activity,” she said.

“It is unacceptable for an employer to set up a system to track an employee’s work without their knowledge and consent.”

The pandemic led to a large number of Australians working from home, along with a corresponding explosion of companies using technology for employee monitoring. The photo shows a woman using a mobile phone

Many of the Commonwealth Bank’s 48,000 employees (logo pictured) use an app called Navigate, which can track their movements

Ms Angrisano said the bank failed to inform the union “that it has been urging widespread surveillance of workers”.

“We are calling on the CBA to stop spying on our members,” she said.

CBA also reportedly uses data on office attendance and computer use to question absenteeism, such as an early score or a long lunch, and has ordered some employees to take time off if they don’t do enough.

Ms Angrisano said workers “had a right” to know what data was being collected.

“It should never be used as a means to intimidate or pressure employees to take time off,” she said.

Prof Holland also questioned the need for this level of oversight.

‘CBA has been around for more than 100 years. How did they do beforehand? Do they need this level of sophistication to basically just control leave,” he said.

The Commonwealth Bank declined to comment on this story.

prof. Holland has come across some very penetrating examples of how employees are being spied on in his work.

“The examples I’ve had are a lot of people who anecdotally went to the bathroom or made a cup of coffee and they came back and there’s an email asking them where they are,” he said.

‘And (the employee wonders) how do you know where I am or not?’

He said some people use so-called jiggers, which are vibrating pads that keep a computer mouse moving so it looks like people are working, even though they’re not.

But people going to such lengths to avoid being caught evading is the reason such spyware exists in the first place.

What worries most people more is employees surfing the internet during working hours for non-work related activities.

The advice to them is to use private devices for private matters.

Julia Angrisano (pictured), national secretary of the Finance Sector Union, wants the Commonwealth Bank to explain how it uses the Navigate app

But even if you use your own devices, such as phones and computers, you can be tracked if you are logged into company software.

“There’s a kind of ubiquity of people’s movements being tracked in a way that I don’t think as Australians we’ve been used to before,” Natalie Gaspar, an Australian partner at Herbert Smith Freehills, told me. news.com.au.

The level of employee surveillance in Australia is so high that if you’ve ever felt you’re being watched, you probably are.