Telework Time & Attendance Investigations (Federal)

[Anonymous]

Is your agency doing any time and attendance investigations to look for telework fraud? If so, what are they doing? Timesheet audits? Keystroke monitoring? I’m wondering why we aren’t seeing more investigations into this.

[Anonymous]

Why would they? Most agencies are understaffed and don’t have time for this.

[Anonymous]

No, but they should.

[Anonymous]

We have one IT person for our entire regional office and he can barely keep up with "I'm locked out" tickets. Who would do this?!

Practically, as a supervisor, I think not getting stuff done is the bigger problem and it's not going to be solved by keystroke monitoring.

[Anonymous]

If a staff member's work indicates that they aren't performing well IT can check keystrokes, log in/log out times, etc.

Work is getting done and done well so no need to audit at this point.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We have one IT person for our entire regional office and he can barely keep up with "I'm locked out" tickets. Who would do this?!

Practically, as a supervisor, I think not getting stuff done is the bigger problem and it's not going to be solved by keystroke monitoring.

Another supervisor here- it would be a start. Sometimes I feel like they think they’re fooling me “oh I’m not getting to X project because I’m so swamped!” Meanwhile everyone else does their work easily. I wish keystroke monitoring was more common.

[Anonymous]

You all need to get a life

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You all need to get a life

Hahahah PP that tweet cracked me up, thanks

Agree with PPs that I thought IT or maybe IG could look at log in/out times etc if they had a reason to suspect you aren't working. Not based on any real info tho..

[Anonymous]

Ask anyone at any federal agency to do anything and they tell you that they’re swamped. If you probe deeper, they get defensive. The reality is, they’re slacking and they don’t want you to ruin the party.

[Anonymous]

The timesheet gets reviewed and approved, so I'm not sure what to audit. I work at a regulatory agency, with lawyers over a certain age, so they print out papers and review them manually (I know, bless their hearts), so keystrokes counting is useless. The best monitoring is results-based and this should be a standard all over the government.

[Anonymous]

Keystroke monitoring doesn't tell you if someone is on a call, in a meeting, or reading hard copy paper. Even if it worked, it's a crutch for absentee managers.

Managers need to assign work and set goals. If your report is not accomplishing the goals you set, break those down into smaller goals until you can find the problem.

[Anonymous]

Telework Fraud - hell no, both hubby and I have been WFH full-time since March of 2020, different agency, IT. We have so so much work, and are so under staffed it would be ludicrous for upper management to even think about micro managing. Our laptops go everywhere with us, and are constantly in meeting and daily standups.

[Anonymous]

[twitter]

Anonymous wrote:Ask anyone at any federal agency to do anything and they tell you that they’re swamped. If you probe deeper, they get defensive. The reality is, they’re slacking and they don’t want you to ruin the party.

Evidence, please.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No, but they should.

Why? That seems dumb.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Telework Fraud - hell no, both hubby and I have been WFH full-time since March of 2020, different agency, IT. We have so so much work, and are so under staffed it would be ludicrous for upper management to even think about micro managing. Our laptops go everywhere with us, and are constantly in meeting and daily standups.

My wife and I are the same, but let’s not pretend that there aren’t folks out there that are milking it. I don’t approve of keystroke monitoring or Teams status monitoring, but supervisors should be looking at whatever level of work productivity makes sense. Of course, that was also the case “in office” as someone could be at their desk effectively doing nothing.