Woman fired after company tracked WFH laptop activity alleges online harassment: ‘Nobody is going to hire me'

Suzie Cheikho was fired from Insurance Australia Group last year after the company tracker her work using keystroke technology. Her story went viral last year.

An Australian remote worker who was fired from her job at the country's largest insurance company after the employer monitored her work using keystroke technology has spoken up a little over a year after she lost her job. Suzie Cheikho was fired from her Insurance Australia Group (IAG) job on the basis on her laptop activity that the company tracked using keystroke technology.

Suzie Cheikho, who was on WFH, was fired from Insurance Australia Group (IAG) in February last year. ((LinkedIn/Suzie Cheikho))

Cheikho had been with the company for 18 years, during which she handled tasks such as generating insurance documents, meeting regulatory deadlines, and ensuring compliance with work-from-home policies. However, her own work-from-home (WFH) performance was seen as inadequate, resulting in her being terminated in February last year.

Cheikho is now worried she may never find a job again.

"This has never happened to me before, and for what?" she said in a now-deleted vidoeo on TikTok, reported Unilad.

“Something that’s very emotional and very private, I never even spoke about it on social media."

In her rant, Suzie Cheikho said she is getting harassed online ever since her story went viral last year.

"I’m literally getting harassed through Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, like what do you want me to do? I can’t get a f**king job," she said.

On LinkedIn, she has put an “open to work” status on her display photo.

Insurance Australia Group tracked Cheikho’s activity for 49 days between October and December 2022 and found that she had very low keystroke activity.

What is keystroke technology?

Keystroke technology tracks and analyses the sequence and timing of key presses in a computer, providing employers insights into an employee's behaviour.

Cheikho allegedly logged in late to work on 47 occasions, logged out early on 29 occasions, and failed to work her rostered hours for 44 days. Additionally, on four days, she did not clock in any work hours. Her average keystrokes per hour were a mere 54, suggesting that she was not performing her work as expected.

At that time, the woman did not accept the employer's allegations, saying “she did not believe for a minute” that she had worked less and alleged that the company had a “premeditated plan to remove her from the business and that she was targeted due to her mental health issues".