Woman fired after company uses keystroke technology to see how she's working from home

If you're the type of person to take a little too much time away from your laptop while you're supposed to be working, you could get caught.

Ok, it isn't uncommon to step away from your laptop while you're working from home to pop a clothing wash on or unload the dishwasher, but there's a point when it will begin to affect your work output.

This is what happened to Insurance Australia Group (IAG) consultant Suzie Cheikho.

She was ultimately fired for not doing enough work with the help of some savvy tech providing data to her employers. She'd been in the role for 18 years.

An Australian woman was fired for not doing enough work while at home. (Igor Ustynskyy/Getty Stock)

Cheikho had reportedly received a warning in 2022 about her work output and, as part of attempts to improve her performance, her employer used keystroke technology to monitor how much she was complying with her own targets while working from home.

In her job, Cheikho was supposed to create insurance documents, hit regulatory timelines and keep an eye on 'work from home compliance'.

But it appears as if she wasn't doing as much as she should have been doing after her keystroke technology data came through.

Cheikho's work activity on 49 days between October and December 2022 were monitored and the results were quite stark.

The review found that she started late on 47 days and finished early on 29 of the days when she was being monitored.

On four of the days she was found to have done no hours of work at all, and on the days when she was working she was accused of not doing very much.

On average she was pressing her keyboard 54 times an hour during the periods in which she was being monitored.

When confronted with this information, Cheikho said she did 'not believe for a minute' that the data generated by keystroke technology was accurate, telling her managers she had 'never not worked'.

Data showed Suzie was pressing her keyboard 54 times an hour on average. (Getty Stock Image)

Describing herself as 'confused and shocked' at the data, she said personal issues had caused a decline in her mental health, which she believes impacted her work.

She said she informed her managers whenever she had to take time out of the working day to make a medical appointment and argued that she made up the time afterwards.

Cheikho went on to file an 'unfair dismissal' case against her former employer, one of the biggest insurance companies in Australia.

This was rejected, however, after it was judged that there was a 'valid reason of misconduct' as Australia's Fair Work Commission (FWC) found that Cheikho had missed deadlines and meetings, been difficult to contact and had cost her employer a fine after failing to complete a task.