Have you ever given in to the temptation to get around work through sly techniques like keyboard jamming or jiggling the mouse to create the illusion of productivity? There are many reasons why remote work is so cherished by employees, but the real and imagined possibility of employees fake-working from home has employers convinced that this way of operating will never hold up long term. Most employees don’t just pretend to work from home. There are meetings to attend, tasks to complete, reports to write, and deadlines that need to be met one way or another.
For the most part, when there is work to do, the work needs to get done, however, there’s a distinct possibility that employees aren’t rooted to their desks from 9 to 5. Employers blame their employees for keyboard jamming during their work hours and avoiding their active duties, while employees blame employers for their productivity paranoia over remote work, forcing them to go to extreme measures to prove that they haven’t moved from their desks.
Methods like keyboard jamming have many employers frustrated, but it leads us to a more serious discussion on employee surveillance at work. (Image: Pexels)
The Trend of Keyboard Jamming at Work Isn’t New, but It Continues to Be a Problem for the Workplace
If your first question was to ask us, “What is keyboard jamming?” then you’ve likely had a proud manager overseeing your diligence, or have never had to deal with employee monitoring software to keep track of your activity during work hours. For the uninitiated, key jammers aren’t specific tools, but often easily available objects used by remote workers who place them on their keyboards. This forces the key to continue typing out a letter with the pressure of the object.
While this doesn’t lead to coherent, quality work, it does show that the keyboard is in use, which is often enough for monitoring software to accept that an employee is hard at work, typing away on their desk. It’s a simple trick and not nearly sophisticated enough to trick a more advanced employee monitoring tracker or a manager who also has access to your screen, however, it gets the job done in a pinch.
Many workers also use software that can keep the mouse cursor moving around on the screen to indicate activity. Such techniques have been in use for years now, but they grew in popularity during the pandemic, when a significant number of the working population with desk jobs were working remotely.
Is Remote Work Really That Inundated by Methods like Key Jamming?
On the surface, these methods to trick your boss while working from home appear relatively harmless as they allow workers to take a break or grab some coffee without being accused of abandoning their work entirely. Unfortunately, despite their primate design, many have been caught using these tricks for extended periods, sometimes to escape for a nap or relax at home and get to other responsibilities.
The desire to pretend to be working from home while you focus on other tasks isn’t just something that entry-level workers or employees with more menial jobs face. In the UK, over 50 police officers have reportedly been let go in the last three years after they were caught keyboard jamming. This presents a serious concern for employers, who are counting on their employees to get their work done and trusting in their ability to do it on time.
The Paranoia Around Productivity Is Stronger with Remote Work, but Is This a Justified Response?
Productivity is a buzzword that has always been relevant to the workplace, but with AI ambitions pushing for greater results, it is now the ultimate goal of every business. The “productivity paranoia” is particularly strong with remote work, where employers can’t loom over desks and watch across the workplace to ensure that workers aren’t slacking off. This does bring up many questions of what productivity truly means in the workplace.
Do employees who work from the office never open up unnecessary tabs and tap away at their keyboards to look productive? Do employees not walk around their workplace with their laptops to create the illusion of heading somewhere important for a meeting? Are breaks always as strictly regulated as an employer would like? In most cases, when employees don’t feel inclined to work or would prefer to have a more relaxed day on the job, they will find ways, no matter how strict the monitoring is at work.
It is indeed much easier to be lazy when working remotely. Employees are less likely to regulate the time they spend on their phones, workers have more distractions on offer, and it is much easier to step away from their desks to spend their time on something entirely unrelated to work. However, this doesn’t have to mean that the system of remote work does not work at all. Neither does it have to mean an increase in employee surveillance tools to track productivity through abstract metrics.
An Increase in Employee Monitoring Will Always Result in an Increase in Employees Cheating the Systems
If employees are determined to fake working from home, they will find a way to do it. Employee surveillance tools for tracking employees working from home are growing more sophisticated, and employers are increasingly investing in multiple tools in order to ensure that employees are working as long as they are logged into work. But no matter how elaborate and expensive a system is, employees may find a workaround and experiment with solutions, even if this comes with the risk of getting caught.
This leaves employers investing in more expensive tools, and employees experimenting with excuses, all while the work remains unfinished. Such strategies benefit no one, and only add to the pressure for workers who do, in fact, dedicatedly perform their work from home. The percentage of workers who see remote work as an excuse to do no work at all is relatively small, and it is often easy enough to identify them when they are unable to show any actual evidence of their work or turn in work that is unfinished and full of errors.
The use of remote work monitoring software is controversial on its own, as it often sets up unrealistic metrics for assessing productivity. The results of this monitoring technology can also be misused, as they may generate false positives and wrongfully accuse an employee of slacking. After all, if a technique as simple as keyboard jamming can be employed to misdirect supervision, was the keyboard tracking evaluating the right aspects in the first place? An employee might not be tapping away at their keyboard vigorously and may still manage to work at the same time.
Flexibility Continues to Lead the Way for Successful Workplace Operations
Businesses aren’t wrong for expecting their employees to work when they are paid to do so, and neither are employees wrong for finding workarounds to excessive surveillance. Employee monitoring tools cause an increase in mistrust on both sides and ultimately lead to more friction than they are worth. Rather than solving an issue of low productivity, they give rise to new ones where employers and employees butt heads once more.
Trends like microshifting are re-entering workplace conversations as they acknowledge that workers operate differently and need variations in how they operate. Such trends bring up concerns of their own, but they ultimately bring us back to the discussion of flexibility and how employees may operate better when they can do so on some of their own terms.
The Remote Work Monitoring Debate Falls Flat When We Turn to Other Methods of Assessing Productivity
Workers who consistently turn in good results have to work to some extent to get through their list of tasks, and that is where productivity ultimately lies. Keyboard jamming may be a very serious problem at work and should rightfully be addressed when detected. But it might also be time to change how we look at productivity and how we evaluate performance and results on the job.
As long as employees are consistently available and able to turn in good results on time, questioning their productivity only results in their guards going up. Employees who are smart enough to find ways to fake working from home are often also good at applying themselves to solve the tasks they are presented with, and putting their ingenuity to use may just be the best solution for everyone.
Why do you think keyboard jamming or other shortcuts become popular at work? Share your thoughts with us in the comments. Subscribe to The HR Digest for more insights on workplace trends, layoffs, and what to expect with the advent of AI.
