The fact that there’s a thriving market for "mouse jigglers" is because some bosses still don’t ... [+]
As it usually does, “the market” has responded to a need with a specialized device called a “mouse jiggler.”
What is a mouse jiggler you ask? If you search Amazon, you’ll get pages of offerings, ranging in price from under $10 to about $50. An ad for a mid-priced model from China’s Shenzhen Vaydeer Technology Co. describes it as an “undetectable mouse mover” that simulates “mouse movement to prevent the computer from entering sleep mode.” Another advertised model even has an accompanying video showing a woman working from home, putting her mouse on the jiggler, taking a walk, then returning to her desk, removing the mouse from the jiggler and resuming work. And, presumably, her absence is never noticed, not even by her computer.
What does the jiggler market say about the state of work? What does it say about the gap between employers and the employees they’re supposedly working so hard to get and keep? What does it say about trust? Does it indicate employers don’t trust employees not to goof off when they’re working remotely? Are employers tracking the online activities of employees working from home? Or, does it show that employees are goofing off and the undetectable mouse jigglers are helping them get away with it?
It’s not very difficult or time consuming to turn your computer back on when it goes into sleep mode. So why would one need a mouse jiggler?
To find out I spoke to a new work-from-home employee who, for now, is using an improvised jiggler when she walks her dogs.
“If you have so much free time, why don’t you ask for more work?” I asked. She replied that she has plenty of work. If she was in an office, however, she imagines she’d be walking around, chatting with people in the halls, and grabbing lunch with colleagues, she said. “When I work from home, I feel like my boss expects me to be on my laptop from 9:00 to 5:00 and reply immediately” to every inquiry or request.
Did her boss tell her that, I asked? Well, not exactly. But her boss did say that she needed to be available at any time for client requests.
As a new hire fresh out of college and wanting to impress, this worker decided that being “available” meant being online all the time. So, when she needed a break, or when her dog needed a break, she used her improvised jiggler to fake it.
At its core, this was not a trust issue, it was a communications issue, which could have been avoided if her manager had more-clearly set expectations and she and her manager had discussed what a typical remote workday would be like.
The remote and hybrid working worlds require the intentional resetting of working norms—daily rhythms, routines, schedules, expectations, communications, response times and so forth—because different people, based on their backgrounds, experiences, work histories, and personal habits and characteristics, will likely make different assumptions if things aren’t clear. This is where tools, such as team norms, or team level agreements, come in.
But is it just a matter of better communication and coordination between managers and employees and across teams? Not likely.
I recently met with a client team at a company whose CEO has mandated that everyone return to work five days a week. The company is tracking badge entries and creating onerous processes for managers to report compliance of team members.
Why the “return to the office” mandate? Word on the street (or rather the hallway) is lack of trust. The boss apparently thinks too many underlings are slacking off.
There are many ways to evaluate individual, team and company performance. Did the boss attempt to evaluate these things before ordering everybody back to the office? A full complement of warm bodies in the office doesn’t guarantee superior, or even improved, results. In fact, the opposite is likely if employees resent being compelled to rejoin the daily rat race.
Why all this pressure to be together five days a week for people who have proven over the past two years that they can deliver remotely? Why all the pressure to continuously be online and have immediate response rates from employees who have proven they can deliver with time flexibility? And, most important, why are so many organizations taking a step back on the supportive and trusting environments their employees have enjoyed since 2020?
The fact that there’s a thriving market for mouse jigglers provides the answer: Some bosses still don’t trust their employees, despite the evidence from the past two years.
That’s a shame. Because even with a potential recession, employers will risk alienating, and losing, some of their best and brightest employees if they refuse to accept the world of work, circa 2022—a world of greater worker autonomy, less face time, and new forms of remote, asynchronous and intentionally in-person collaboration and human connection.
