It's a tense issue as companies monitor what remote employees are doing

It may be a new year, but many employers are still relying on an old tool for evaluating productivity.

That would be the clock — against which so much of work is measured, despite ongoing changes in how, where and when work gets done.

Employers and employees can sometimes butt heads over what happens on company time, but in severe cases, an employee could be accused of time theft. And this issue is growing more contentious as employers monitor what remote workers are doing outside of the confines of traditional offices.

"Time theft is arguably an even bigger issue for employers at this time than it has been before," said Nadia Zaman, an employment lawyer with Rudner Law in Markham, Ont.

Not what you're paid to be doing

Time theft encompasses a broad range of behaviours — anything from taking longer-than-scheduled breaks or logging off early, to using work hours to do household tasks — all of which an employer would view as being contrary to what one should be doing while getting paid to work.

"Time theft is really when the person actually should be working and they're not," said Janet Candido, a Toronto-based HR consultant. "They're actively doing something else."

Zaman, looking through an employment-law lens, said it's essentially "when an employee is paid for work that they have not performed," or for time in which they were not actually working.

Many people might find themselves occasionally guilty,...

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