Explained: Cognizant Employee Activity Monitoring Controversy And Clarification From Company

Cognizant has reportedly started training select executives on ProHance, a workforce-management tool that tracks how long employees remain active on their laptops. The new tracking system also monitors the applications and websites used by employees during work hours.

The workforce-management tool is designed to track employee activity on laptops, including applications and websites used during work hours. The system reportedly logs mouse and keyboard activity to gauge engagement levels. An employee is marked "idle" if no keyboard or mouse activity is detected for more than 300 seconds, according to a Mint report. If a personal computer or laptop remains idle for 15 minutes, the system marks the employee as engaged in "activities away from the system."

ProHance dashboards offer minute-by-minute insights into an employee’s workday, login times, active applications and the duration of various tasks, as per an Economic Times report. The system maps work patterns, breaks and time spent across activities to spot workflow bottlenecks and areas for optimisation.

Cognizant also uses the D+ Scorecard, which assigns performance scores to business unit heads across delivery, practice, and transformation teams. Its Ideabox platform tracks detailed information on initiatives, including timelines, stages, nominees, approvers, and projected benefits or cost savings.

During the pandemic, many companies adopted AI-based tools to monitor remote-work productivity and prevent fraud, measures aimed at strengthening client confidence.

According to the Mint report, companies use workforce-management tools like 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 is reportedly used by British retailer Tesco, India’s Wipro Ltd, Firstsource Solutions Ltd., and real-estate investment firm Jones Lang LaSalle IP, Inc. (JLL).

According to a report in The Times of India, Cognizant has rejected claims that it monitors employees. A spokesperson said the company "occasionally" uses "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 tools are intended "to help better understand the client process steps and related time metrics to assess process design inefficiencies as part of the process transformation efforts" and are "not designed or used to track or evaluate the individual performance of employees."

As per the TOI report, the spokesperson added that the tools are implemented only with employee consent, "and it is made clear that these are not used for performance evaluation," and they "have no impact on the composition of teams engaged in these projects."

The Cognizant spokesperson said that such tracking is a standard industry practice, introduced at the request of certain clients in specific projects, the TOI report added. It is carried out with employee consent, and staff are aware they are being monitored. The data is not used for performance evaluation.