Stepping away from the workstation? Cognizant says think again

About a month ago, the Nasdaq-listed firm, which is weighing listing on Indian bourses as well, rolled out a course for executives to familiarize them with workforce-management tools such as ProHance, as part of select projects, becoming arguably the latest to double down on micro-tracking employee activities.

The course outlines the maximum interval within which employees must log mouse or keyboard activity, as well as the permissible duration they can remain inactive or away from their systems.

An employee will be marked “idle if no keyboard or mouse activity is detected for more than 300 seconds," according to the course details accessed by Mint.

The system will mark an employee as engaged in “activities away from the system" if her personal computer or laptop remains idle for 15 minutes.

The time span for both these triggers is subject to the discretion of the specific delivery teams.

Mint could not independently ascertain the number of employees with whom the course was shared, whether it includes training on tools other than ProHance, or when it will be rolled out across the company.

However, the good news is that the company doesn't plan to use these tools for evaluating employee performance, for now.

“We occasionally use various productivity measurement tools, a common industry practice, in select business process management or intuitive operations and automation projects, at the request of customers. The purpose is to help better understand the client process steps and related time metrics to assess process design inefficiencies," said a Cognizant spokesperson.

Companies use workforce-management tools, such as ProHance and Sapience, to track employee activities, including time spent on the system, hours dedicated to critical project websites and the duration of breaks.

ProHance, for example, is used by British retailer Tesco, India's fourth-largest IT services company Wipro Ltd and its smaller peer Firstsource Solutions Ltd and real-estate investment firm Jones Lang LaSalle IP, Inc., or JLL, according to its website.

Micro management

An analyst attributed Cognizant's moves to “three converging pressures".

“First, client demand for tighter controls and evidence of productivity in a hybrid delivery model. Second, the shift to artificial intelligence (AI) is exposing process debt and idle time, so leaders want to establish a baseline before automating or rearchitecting work. Third, margin protection," said Phil Fersht, chief executive of US-based IT research firm HFS Research.

“With pricing pressure and wage inflation, providers are using telemetry to reduce rework, improve schedule adherence, and defend SLAs (service level agreements)," he added.

The course contains at least eight other metrics—logged/idle/productive hours per day, time away from the system, and time spent per task, among others—for recording the time spent by employees on breaks and meetings, on “productive applications" and tools, and even the time spent on the system in completing tasks.

Though the company doesn't plan to use these tools for evaluating employee performance, a five-second slide in the course suggests that it will be used to ascertain time efficiency, i.e., the actual production hours out of the expected production hours, according to its account policy.

The company, in its email, also stated that the tool (ProHance) would be used only after obtaining the employees' consent; however, some executives claimed the course was mandatory.

“We received a mandatory course, which includes a user acceptance. We had to click on ‘I agree’ in order to complete the course," said an executive on condition of anonymity.

The system “automatically logs employees out" if they are away for more than a certain period, said a second executive on condition of anonymity.

“However, we are told to complete a fixed number of hours despite the breaks. The company has been doubling down on this since the last two months because the client and the company both want more productivity and more billing," the executive added.

The rollout of such productivity measurement tools comes as IT services firms increase their focus on employee productivity and skill development amid rising automation.

Wipro made it mandatory for senior executives to take an English competency test, and those who failed to clear it on their first attempt were placed on a performance improvement plan, Mint reported on 28 July.

Earlier, the country's sixth-largest IT firm, LTIMindtree Ltd, mandated its managers to clear a competency exam as part of their appraisals. The exam, consisting of multiple-choice questions on coding and mathematics, accounted for half of the appraisal weight for project leads, managers, and lead architects, with the remainder based on project completion, Mint reported on 28 February.

To be sure, Cognizant is undergoing a turnaround led by chief executive S. Ravi Kumar, who took charge in January 2023. One of his first actions after taking over was to announce plans to return about 45% of its office space in the country over the next three years.

As of September, it had 349,800 employees, three-fourths of whom are based in India, making it an Indian heritage IT services firm.

The company, which follows a January-December fiscal year, ended 2023-24 with a revenue of $19.74 billion, up 1.98% year-on-year. In the September quarter, the company has guided for industry-leading annual growth of 6.6-6.9% for 2025, translating to $21.05-21.1 billion in revenue.

Employee concerns

For now, some executives were puzzled by Cognizant’s move.

“We have heard of projects where clients want to track employee productivity, but such micro-management is unheard of," said a third executive on condition of anonymity.

Although there are concerns about privacy, micro-productivity tracking tools are becoming an industry standard, with many banks and big tech firms using them at their clients’ requests, said Peter Bendor-Samuel, founder of the Dallas-based IT research and consulting firm Everest Group.

“ProHance and systems like it are becoming common tools as firms seek to understand how the systems they provide their employees are used and where they can be improved. It is somewhat “big brother" like, and some employees have concerns about privacy and micro management," he said.

“Privacy is an issue, but micro management is not common if ever occurring," he added.