Skip to content

BC tribunal orders woman to repay employer for ‘time theft’

The employer submitted a counterclaim with evidence showing a 50-hour discrepancy between her timesheets and activity recorded by the tracking software on her work computer.

Article content

A tribunal has ordered a British Columbia accountant to pay her former employer more than $2,600 after a tracking software showed she engaged in “time theft” while working from home.

Advertising 2

Article content

The decision released this week by the civil resolution tribunal shows the woman made a claim of $5,000 to cover unpaid wages and severance pay, arguing she had been fired without cause last March.

Article content

But the employer, Reach CPA Inc., submitted a counterclaim with evidence showing a 50-hour discrepancy between her timesheets and activity recorded by the tracking software on her work computer.

The decision shows the woman started working remotely in October 2021 and Reach installed the software, called TimeCamp, on her laptop four months later, shortly after she and her manager met to discuss her performance.

The tribunal says Reach compared the woman’s timesheets with the software’s data over a month between late February and March and found she claimed 50 hours during which it appeared she wasn’t working.

Advertising 3

Article content

The ruling orders her to pay Reach $2,603 ​​plus interest in debt and damages for time theft and an outstanding portion of an advance the company had given her for home office equipment and educational fees, along with a $125 fee to the tribunal.

The woman told the tribunal she could not explain the 50 hours that were not accounted for since she did not fully understand how to use the software, it says.

But board member Megan Stewart found that it didn’t matter given the program automatically tracked the difference between her work and personal activities.

“Time theft in the employment context is viewed as a very serious form of misconduct,” says the decision released Wednesday.

Trust and honesty are essential to an employment relationship, especially in a remote-work environment, it says.

Advertising 4

Article content

The woman’s misconduct led to “an irreparable breakdown in her employment relationship with Reach,” Stewart says in the decision, finding “dismissal was proportionate in the circumstances.”

The woman also told the tribunal she spent time working with hard copies that TimeCamp would not have captured, the decision notes, but Reach submitted data showing with the time she spent printing, she could not have printed the large volume of documents she would have needed .

Even if she had been working with hard copies, Stewart found no evidence that the woman uploaded her work into the company’s electronic system or otherwise demonstrated that she spent any significant amount of time performing work-related tasks in connection with the 50 hours that were unaccounted for for


More news, fewer ads: Our in-depth journalism is possible thanks to the support of our subscribers. For just $3.50 per week, you can get unlimited, ad-lite access to The Vancouver Sun, The Province, National Post and 13 other Canadian news sites. Support us by subscribing today: The Vancouver Sun | The Province.

Advertisement 1

Comments

Postmedia is committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion and encouraging all readers to share their views on our articles. Comments may take up to an hour for moderation before appearing on the site. We ask you to keep your comments relevant and respectful. We have enabled email notifications—you will now receive an email if you receive a reply to your comment, there is an update to a comment thread you follow or if a user you follow comments. Visit our Community Guidelines for more information and details on how to adjust your email settings.