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Chase Frazer
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It has become a growing trend since the Pandemic began for employees to work remotely from home or tropical climates. As we are gaining more distance from the onset of the Covid more and more workers are choosing to work from home. Some employees are prepared to leave jobs they have worked at for many years unless they are afforded the opportunity to either work from home all the times or at minimum a hybrid model. As employees are demanding more and more, they often forget they owe responsibilities to their employers to work the entire "8-hour" work day, and to ensure they are not using their paid working time to watch tv, browse the internet or take extended lunch hours, go to a movie or go golfing.
Time theft is a real issue and employers are beginning to take notice. Some employers have purchased software to track employee's time in each task they are doing. Employers have chosen to speak with their employees in zoom or teams meetings rather than on the phone to gain some insight into the location the employee is speaking from. At times employers require their employees to wear business attire while in these meeting to again ensure the employee is genuinely working.
Recently, in British Columbia ("BC) the issue of time theft arose in a recent decision, which made international news in light of the new working from home environment, before the B.C. Civil Resolution Tribunal in which Karlee Besse sued Reach CPA Inc., an accounting firm in Courtenay, B.C., for wrongful dismissal.
Besse claimed unpaid wages and wrongful dismissal damages after a few months of employment. Reach responded that it terminated her because she engaged in time theft and counterclaimed for the wages it paid her for the period in which it claimed she was not working at all or, at least, not for the company. The company had purchased surveillance software, TimeCamp, tracking employees’ remote work, and found 50.76 unaccounted hours that Besse reported on her timesheet, but which did not appear to be spent on work. She was terminated for cause based on the irregularities between her timesheet and the software usage logs.
Besse was unable to account for these 50.76 hours. The Tribunal found that that did not matter because the functionality made absolutely clear what she was doing. Besse argued that she printed out paper copies of client documents that were not captured by TimeCamp but the TimeCamp data showed that the time she spent printing proved that she could not have printed the large volume of documents she required to work in hard copy and, even if she had been working in hard copy, she would have had to enter the information into the software, which she did not do.
The Tribunal made a point which is true in all remote employment relationships in making its decision.
"Given that trust and honesty are essential to an employment relationship, particularly in a work environment where direct supervision is absent, I find her misconduct led to an irreparable breakdown of her employment relationship with Reach and it had just cause to terminate her employment,” the tribunal ruled. Having found that Reach had just cause for terminating her for time theft, it ordered her to repay the value of the 50.76 hours, based on her annual salary, or $1,506.34.
Time theft is a growing issue in the new world remote work and employers will need to take action to ensure they are not the victims of their employee's time theft.
Working remotely has increased exponentially since the onset of Covid-19. Employers and employees would benefit from learning about the quickly changing remote working environment.
Time theft is a concept Levitt was speaking about prior to anyone hearing of the term and recently a court in British Columbia, Canada ordered an employee to pay back wages she collected from her employee for 50 hours of fictitious time sheets.
As working remotely or the hybrid office becomes an even more regular part of society, it is important to learn limits employers can legally place on employees and their rights to pursue damages if employees do not adhere to such limits.