Is Your Boss Monitoring Your In-Office Attendance?
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Here's your money briefing for Tuesday, September 26th. I'm J.R. Whelan for The Wall Street Journal. Employees' work IDs give them access to the office. They also give the boss an idea of who's adhering to return-to-office policies.
Now, a number of companies realizing they're not getting enough people into the office are now looking at these badge swipe data reports and trying to figure out who's resisting, who's still not coming in, and what do we need to do about it?
We'll talk to Wall Street Journal reporter Chip Cutter after the break.
Listen at schwab.com slash washingtonwise.
Companies who've put return-to-the-office policies in place are tracking when employees come into work and how long they're staying. Wall Street Journal workplace reporter Chip Cutter joins me. So, Chip, how are companies doing this?
Well, all of those ID cards that everybody has on their lanyards or attached to their waists – They're tracking when you swipe into an office and oftentimes when you swipe out. So companies get these reports, and oftentimes they mostly use these badge systems for security purposes. But now a number of companies realizing they're not getting enough people into the office are now looking at these badge swipe data reports and trying to figure out who's resisting, who's still not coming in, and what do we need to do about it.
You know, there are rumors and whispers in a lot of places. I think management is tracking where we're going. It's actually happening.
It's actually happening. And it's happening to a number of well-known employers. Facebook's parent Meta sent employees a note in August saying that managers will be looking at badge swipe data on a monthly basis and that for people who consistently did not comply with the company's policy for in-office-based workers to be there three days a week, that there could be consequences up to including termination. Are companies legally allowed to do this? Companies are definitely within their rights to do this.
What is the episode about and who is the guest reporter?
Employment lawyers that I spoke with said companies have wide legal latitude to track workers on the job. And so this is just one way that they're doing so. And even if an employee, for example, asked to see their badge swipe data, a company would not have to turn that over. They may in a case of litigation. But for the most part, bosses are well within their rights to look at this data and to make judgments and decisions based on it. So when companies see the data, what are they looking for? Well, they're looking for outliers. So it might be something extreme, like someone who hasn't badged into an office for weeks. But it could also be someone who, for example, consistently hasn't met a requirement to be there three or four days a week.
So it could just be someone who's only badging in once a week or twice a week. It could be someone who consistently badges in late and leaves early, is only in the office, for example, for a few hours. This batch swipe data is complicated and hard to measure in part because companies have a lot of employees. So you get these big reports and you have to figure out how do you sift them and make sense of them. And so that's why you want to set up these sort of rules.
So you mentioned it could result in penalties up to termination. So employees are being penalized for this.
They are. Basically, bosses are now coming to some workers saying, why are you not following the rules? We've noticed, for example, that you haven't badged in for weeks now.
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