Exclusive-Canadian lender TD tells some employees it will use software to monitor their work

By Nivedita Balu

TORONTO, June 19 (Reuters) – Toronto-Dominion Bank told some employees working in its financial crimes and risk management team that it would run software to track their work, prompting questions around consent and privacy in the workplace as the Canadian lender tries to increase productivity, according to a recording ‌of a team call reviewed by Reuters and a document TD shared with employees.

The program will track the time employees spend on browsers and internal chat ‌and meeting applications, according to the recording.

Companies are increasingly facing employee pushback over the deployment of software to monitor their work.

TD said in a statement to Reuters the deployment is “standard practice across the industry.” “In various parts ​of our business, we use automated solutions to improve insights and better allocate resources,” the company said. “This is not AI and not specific to any business or matter, the tool allows managers to more accurately manage workflows, team capacity and performance. Where deployed, colleagues are informed about where they are used and for what purpose.”

TD said it has safeguards in place to protect colleagues’ privacy.

ActiveOps, the company providing the software, describes WorkiQ as a tool for “employee and wellbeing intelligence” on its website. ActiveOps did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“The idea is it’s ‌going to show pain points, where do we spend too ⁠much time … We know we have a lot of pain points across our systems,” Deanna Pacitti, TD’s associate vice president of high-risk investigations, told her team on the call on Thursday.

“It is running in the background and it did go through privacy review,” Pacitti said of WorkiQ ⁠in response to employee questions about privacy concerns. The tool will not listen to conversations if employees are in a meeting, but will show if the employee is active, she said. She subsequently clarified that being active referred to an employee being in a meeting. In another example, Pacitti said the tool will capture the employee working in Excel, but will not track what they are ​doing ​in the spreadsheet application.

INTERNET DURING LUNCH?

TD has expanded its financial crimes and compliance unit in recent years, ​after paying a record fine for money laundering violations in the ‌U.S., and the largest such fine paid by a major bank in Canada.

Most TD employees have worked on a hybrid basis between the office and home since the pandemic.

In an undated Frequently Asked Questions document shared with Reuters, TD told employees WorkiQ will help managers regain transparency lost in a remote work environment. The document responded to questions such as “Can I use the Internet during my lunch hour?” and “How much time is a colleague expected to have accounted for during the day?” TD said in the document there is an acceptable amount of unaccounted-for time and the company is working to determine those time expectations.

Reuters could not determine how many employees would be affected or if they would only be in Canada. ‌A source who spoke anonymously because of the matter’s sensitivity said 90 to 100 people were ​on the call, which Reuters could not confirm.

TD employees raised questions on the call about privacy, what the ​tool would track, and if it could be used for performance management. They ​also inquired if they would be asked for consent and how the data would be used.

One employee said it would be more helpful if ‌the resources used to monitor how workers use their time could instead ​be used to alleviate some manual processes.

“I totally ​agree with you. We have way too much manual stuff,” Pacitti said. “We’re spending way too much time on that manual effort. I can only hope that this will further prove that point.”

The Financial Times reported in March that JPMorgan, the biggest U.S. bank, was starting to monitor the hours of its junior investment bankers, ​saying it was for their own well-being. The bank could not ‌be immediately reached on Juneteenth, the U.S. holiday marking the end of slavery in the U.S.

Meta is dialing back elements of its plan to collect employee ​mouse movements, keystrokes and other actions for use as AI training data, according to an internal memo seen by Reuters this month, following weeks of ​pushback from staffers.

(Reporting by Nivedita Balu in Toronto; Editing by Caroline Stauffer and Rod Nickel)