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Is Your Laptop Your New Boss?
If you work in the IT sector or in a role that involves a company laptop, there’s a good chance your device knows you better than anyone else. It knows when you log in, when you take a coffee break, which Excel sheet you opened, and for how long you scrolled through a YouTube video. Welcome to the new world of work, where the line between productivity management and digital surveillance is becoming increasingly blurry. The big question is: should companies be tracking employee productivity, and at what cost?
The All-Seeing Software: What’s Happening at Companies like Cognizant?
Recent reports have brought major IT firm Cognizant into the spotlight. The company is allegedly rolling out a new software tool to track the productivity of its employees on select projects. But this isn’t about counting completed tasks; it’s about monitoring every single moment of digital activity.
Here’s how it reportedly works: the software records mouse movements and keyboard activity. If an employee shows no keyboard or mouse activity for more than five minutes (300 seconds), they can be flagged as “idle.” If the laptop remains inactive for a total of 15 minutes, the employee might be marked as “away from system.” While Cognizant has officially denied using software to monitor employees in this manner, the news has ignited a firestorm of debate across the corporate world.
And Cognizant is far from alone. Many IT firms are adopting similar tools. Even giants like Microsoft are not immune to this trend. A planned update for Microsoft Teams will now reflect an employee’s work location based on their Wi-Fi connection, automatically telling the company if you’re in the office or working from a different building.
The Justification: Output over Outcome
So, why are companies doing this? From a management perspective, the argument is simple: they need to understand how work gets done, especially in a remote or hybrid environment. They insist it’s not about “policing” employees but about identifying bottlenecks, reducing wasted time, and building more efficient processes. The goal, they say, is to measure output—the sheer volume of activity like emails sent, files closed, and hours logged in.
The Employee’s Dilemma: Privacy, Pressure, and Micromanagement
For employees, however, the story looks very different. They don’t see efficiency; they see a dashboard that turns their every pause into a black mark on their record. This constant digital monitoring raises serious concerns about privacy and can lead to a culture of institutionalized micromanagement. Employees fear that this activity data—how many minutes they were “idle”—could become the basis for their next performance appraisal.
The problem with this approach is that it often mistakes “busyness” for “brilliance.” True productivity isn’t about sending 20 mediocre emails instead of one brilliant one that solves a major problem. It’s not about fidgeting with your mouse to avoid being marked “idle” while you spend three hours deeply thinking through a complex solution. When companies focus solely on output instead of outcome, they miss the point of modern work. They begin to reward the appearance of work rather than the work itself.
A Ticking Time Bomb of Distrust
This “technology-crime arms race,” where employers find new ways to monitor and employees find new ways to evade it, is damaging to the very fabric of a healthy workplace: trust. As these tracking tools grow smarter, they beg a looming question for company leaders worldwide: do you want employees who perform for a dashboard, or employees who perform to deliver results? One path leads to constant activity and burnout; the other leads to innovation and genuine success. The choice will define the future of work itself.
Social Message: True productivity stems from trust, autonomy, and a focus on meaningful outcomes, not from constant digital surveillance. A healthy workplace should empower employees to do their best work, not force them to look busy for a tracking software. Innovation is born from deep thought, not frantic mouse clicks.
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