Ah court ordered an accountant in British Columbia to pay her former employer more than $2,600 after tracking software showed she was involved in “time theft” while working from home.
Decisions announced this week by civil resolution court The woman claimed she was fired for no reason last March and claimed $5,000 to cover her unpaid wages and severance pay.
However, her employer, Reach CPA Inc., filed a counterclaim with evidence showing a 50-hour discrepancy between her timesheets and the activity recorded by the tracking software on her work computer. submitted.
The decision indicates that the woman began working remotely in October 2021 and Reach installed software called TimeCamp on her laptop.
of court Reach compared the women’s timesheets with the software’s data and found that they claimed to have worked 50 hours for the month of late February through March.
The ruling awarded Leach $2,603, plus interest on her debts and damages for theft of time, and an unpaid advance payment the company gave her for home office supplies and education, plus a $125 fee. is ordered to be paid to the company. court.
The woman court She said she didn’t fully understand how to use the software, so she couldn’t explain the 50 unexplained hours.
But court Member Megan Stewart found that wasn’t a problem, given that the program automatically tracks the differences between her work and personal activities.
The decision announced Wednesday said that “time theft in the context of employment is considered a very serious form of cheating.”
Trust and honesty are essential to any employment relationship, especially in a remote work environment, the company said.
The woman’s misconduct led to “an irreparable breakdown of the employment relationship with Leach,” Stewart said in the decision, adding that “the dismissal proportional to the situation. ”
the woman said again court She spent time working on hard copy that TimeCamp would not have captured, but Reach provided data showing her time spent in print.
While working with hard copies, Stewart found no evidence that the woman had uploaded her work to the company’s electronic systems or otherwise related to the unaccounted 50 hours. Nor did we find any evidence that they spent significant time on work-related tasks. for.
