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- Wells Fargo reportedly fired over a dozen workers for faking work with simulated keyboard activity.
- This move highlights the ongoing tensions between bosses and workers feeling disengaged.
- A recent Gallup report shows US worker engagement is at its lowest in over a decade.
Wells Fargo's decision to fire reportedly more than a dozen workers it accused of faking work shows some bosses are done tolerating disengaged employees.
The financial giant fired the workers last month "after review of allegations involving simulation of keyboard activity creating impression of active work," Bloomberg reported, citing filings to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.
According to LinkedIn profiles that appear to correspond to people named in FINRA filings seen by Business Insider, several workers dismissed from Wells Fargo in May categorized their roles as either hybrid or remote.
The filings, however, do not say whether the fired employees were allegedly faking work from home.
A Wells Fargo spokesperson didn't immediately respond to BI's request for comment.
It's unclear whether the former employees were using so-called mouse jigglers, which some workers have used to keep their chat status active and prevent their computers from going to sleep.
Regardless, the firings are a reminder that businesses can face high costs when workers mail it in and of the continuing tug-of-war over where people do their jobs. Big US banks have been some of the strictest employers when it comes to calling workers back to the office.
Wells Fargo states on its website that many of its corporate workers are eligible to work hybrid roles. But that flexibility has been harder to come by in finance as Wall Street firms continue to push workers to return to the office. In one survey last year, however, two-thirds of execs at US financial services companies said they'd rather quit than head into the office five days a week.
While some of the return-to-office fights from a couple of years ago have cooled, there are still disagreements about the impact of workers not being in their cubicles every day. And it's not just because bosses might not trust employees when they're not within earshot of them. Some remote workers also report feeling less dialed into their 9-to-5.
That feeling is also showing up in other snapshots of worker sentiment. In April, the polling firm Gallup reported that worker engagement in the US had fallen to the lowest level in more than a decade. Only about one in three full- and part-time workers reported being engaged in the first quarter of 2024, according to Gallup.
More worrisome, Gallup found that 17% of workers were "actively disengaged" in the first three months of the year, up a point from 2023.