Wells Fargo fires employees faking remote work with ‘mouse jigglers’
CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES — U.S. banking giant Wells Fargo has fired several employees after allegations that they were faking keyboard activity to give the impression of active work when they were not.
The company disclosed these personnel actions in filings with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (Finra). Wells Fargo declined to comment on how the alleged issue was identified or whether it was linked to remote work.
It has been reported that a dozen people had been affected, including six employees who were fired and a worker who voluntarily resigned.
A spokesperson for Wells Fargo told the BBC that the company “holds employees to the highest standards and does not tolerate unethical behavior.”
Monitoring tools and evasion tactics
As remote work expanded during the COVID-19 pandemic, large corporations have adopted advanced monitoring tools to ensure employee productivity. These tools can track keystrokes, eye movements, capture screenshots, and record visited websites.
However, technology has also advanced to circumvent such surveillance, with “mouse jigglers” being a popular solution for making computers appear active. Thousands of these devices have been sold on Amazon for under $10 in the past month.
Mouse jigglers created the illusion of continuous keyboard activity, misleading supervisors about the actual work being done. This issue surfaced amid increasing scrutiny and regulatory requirements for remote work environments in the financial sector.
Return to office push in finance sector
The incident at Wells Fargo is part of a broader push within the financial industry to get employees back to the office.
Many firms are transitioning away from the remote work models that became prevalent during the pandemic. According to research from the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM) Business School, Stanford, and the University of Chicago, remote workdays in the U.S. have dropped from over 60% at the height of the pandemic to just under 27% in May.
Work-from-home levels in the U.S. have dropped to their lowest point since the spring of 2020, but remote work still dominates the tech and finance sectors, according to the latest data from WFH Research.
The information/technology and finance/insurance sectors had the highest share of remote workers at 69% and 66%, respectively, averaging 2.2 work-from-home days per week.
Wells Fargo announced a hybrid flexible model in 2022, allowing some employees to work remotely for part of the week. However, the bank has been encouraging a greater in-person presence, with most employees expected to be in the office at least three days a week.
