Cognizant starts tracking employees’ laptop and website activity on select projects

Cognizant starts tracking employees’ laptop and website activity on select projects

Cognizant Technology Solutions has begun training select executives on workforce management tools such as ProHance to track how long employees stay active on their laptops and which applications or websites they use during work hours, according to course material reported by Mint and other outlets.

How the new monitoring works

The training module explains that the tool records mouse and keyboard activity and classifies people by how long their systems sit idle. An employee can be tagged “idle” if there is no activity for more than 300 seconds and marked as “away from system” if the laptop remains inactive for 15 minutes, with exact thresholds left to individual delivery teams.

ProHance style dashboards typically show when a user is logged in, which apps are open, and how much time is spent on different tasks, creating a minute-by-minute picture of a typical workday. Cognizant is currently introducing this on select client projects rather than company-wide, according to reports.

What Cognizant says it is trying to do

The company has told employees that the data is meant to understand process steps and improve utilisation, not to rank or rate individual performance at this stage. Some of the push is coming from clients that want clearer proof of productivity in hybrid and offshore models, as well as tighter control over billable hours in a margin conscious environment.

Executives are being trained on how to interpret “idle” and “away” labels and how the metrics can be used to redesign workflows or spot bottlenecks, rather than immediately escalate against specific employees.

Why employees and privacy advocates are uneasy

Inside the company, some staff say they have been asked to complete the ProHance course as a mandatory module with a consent click, which they fear could later be used to justify always on surveillance. They worry that even if the tool is not formally part of appraisal systems today, the line between “workload visibility” and “micromanagement” can quickly blur, especially if managers start informally quoting idle time metrics in feedback conversations.

Privacy advocates point out that India’s new data protection regime still leaves grey areas around how far employers can go in tracking workers and how transparently that data must be disclosed, stored and used. For many employees, the deeper concern is cultural: a sense that they are increasingly being treated as data points on a dashboard rather than professionals trusted to manage their own time.

Part of a wider trend in IT and remote work

Cognizant’s experiment fits a broader post pandemic move toward “bossware” tools in IT services and business process firms, where clients paying by the hour want stronger evidence of effort in distributed teams. Proponents argue that such monitoring can surface genuine inefficiencies and even protect diligent workers from being blamed for slow systems or broken processes. Critics counter that constant tracking can damage morale, push people toward “performing for the tool” instead of focusing on outcomes, and erode the psychological safety that knowledge work depends on.

For now, Cognizant insists the rollout is limited and focused on select engagements. How the company uses the data in practice, and whether it creeps into formal performance decisions, will determine whether employees see it as a productivity aid or an intrusion into their workday.