Woman’s 18-year job ends over remote keystroke monitoring

An insurance consultant was sacked after she was found to have worked less than her rostered hours on 44 days. She did zero hours of work on four days.

An insurance consultant named Suzie Cheikho recently lost her job after being monitored by keystroke technology while working remotely. Cheikho, who was a consultant for Insurance Australia Group (IAG), was terminated for not typing enough while working from home, reported The New York Post.

The woman’s typing speed was only 54 keystrokes per hour on average.(Representationl Image: Pexels/Anna Shvets)

Cheikho had worked for the company for 18 years and was responsible for creating insurance documents, meeting regulatory timelines, and ensuring work-from-home compliance. However, her own work from home performance was deemed inadequate, resulting in her being sacked on February 20 this year.

This comes after the company issued her a formal warning three months prior and put her on a performance improvement plan in November 2021. The New York Post reported that she had missed deadlines, meetings and was absent and uncontactable. Her failure to complete a task even led to the company being fined by industry regulators.

Subsequently, Cheikho brought an unfair dismissal application against the company, which the Fair Work Commission (FWC) rejected, ruling that she was terminated for a “valid reason of misconduct.”

The outlet further reported that the company tracked Cheikho’s activity for 49 days between October and December and found that she had very low keystroke activity.

She reported to work late on 47 days, finished early on 29 days, and did not work her rostered hours for 44 days. On four days, she did zero hours of work, and her average keystrokes per hour were only 54, indicating that “she was not presenting for work and performing as required.”

Cheikho argued that “she did not believe for a minute” that she had worked less and even claimed that her FWC employer had a “premeditated plan to remove her from the business and that she was targeted due to her mental health issues.”

During a Microsoft Teams meeting, Cheikho had written the F word across her hand while discussing her work performance with her manager.

FWC Deputy President Thomas Roberts ruled that the evidence showed Cheikho “was not working as she was required to do during her designated working hours”. He found Cheikho could not provide a credible explanation for the data to her employers or throughout the FWC proceedings. “The applicant was dismissed for a valid reason of misconduct,” Roberts noted in FWC findings.