Suzie Cheikho was sacked after her boss monitored how much work she does.
A woman who became well-known last year after her employer monitored her work activity with keystroke technology while she worked from home is now worried she may never find employment again.
Suzie Cheikho was terminated from her position at Insurance Australia Group in February 2023, after having spent 18 years with the company.
She tried to file a claim for unfair dismissal against IAG, but her attempt was unsuccessful.
In August last year, it was determined that the company had a ‘valid reason of misconduct’ for letting an employee go.
The Fair Work Commission (FWC) in Australia concluded that Cheikho had not met deadlines and missed meetings, and she was also hard to reach.
Additionally, her failure to complete a specific task resulted in a fine for her employer.
Additionally, the former consultant had received a warning a few months earlier, in November 2022.
So, how exactly did the company figure out how much work (or the lack thereof) Cheikho was doing at home?
The company monitored the former employee’s productivity using keystroke technology, tracking her work activity over 49 days from October to December 2022.
The company used keystroke technology to monitor her work.Getty Stock Photo
The findings were not in Cheikho’s favor.
It was found that she started late on 47 of those days and finished early on 29 days during the monitoring period.
But that’s not all. It was also discovered that Cheikho did not work at all on four of those days, and on the days she did work, her keyboard activity was not particularly high.
On average, she pressed her keyboard 54 times per hour while her work was being monitored.
After her story became widely known, Cheikho spoke to MailOnline about her concerns for her future job opportunities.
“It’s embarrassing that this story has gone viral – nobody is going to hire me,” she expressed.
“In 18 years of work there, I only ever got one warning.”
Suzie Cheikho was fired last year.LinkedIn/Suzie Cheikho
When asked about the accuracy of the work activity recorded while she was working from home, Cheikho expressed disbelief in the keystroke technology’s data, telling her managers that she had ‘never not worked’.
Since the incident became public last year, Cheikho mentioned she was facing harassment.
“This has never happened to me before, and for what?” she lamented in a now-deleted TikTok video.
“It’s something very emotional and very private; I never talked about it on social media.
“I’m literally getting harassed through Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok. What do you want me to do? I can’t get a f**king job.”
