A feature of many communications systems, such as Slack or Teams, is a little green dot or other graphical device that indicates you are online. God forbid that you should not be online, for commonly there will be a shaming message next to your name “last seen at 8.03” or even worse, the ultimate sin: “offline”.

Loading

It reminds me of when the teacher takes the register and enquires of the class “where is Jimmy?” and the class sneak says, “He is off at the cricket.”

Some managers are not satisfied with the dots and worry you could still be making the dashes to the cricket on company time. On video calls they insist on seeing your living, animated face, not your profile picture.

Leveraging the new social etiquette for their own control needs, managers will upbraid you for being rude not to participate with the full cruet of hair (if applicable), eyes, nose, lips, teeth (if applicable) and chin(s). It is a not-too-subtle method to ensure you are not listening to a podcast or reading a blog, during their oh-so-thrilling meeting about team building.

In this cat-and-mouse game, pillars, plot plants and ghost logins have now been replaced with mouse jigglers. A mouse jiggler is a USB device that fakes mouse movements by jiggling the position of the cursor on the screen, giving the impression to anyone monitoring that you are busy working.

Online forums are full of tips to keep the green light shining, such as changing the settings on your PC or phone to keep it always on. It is not very green, but it keeps the precious green dot alive – until the software changes to prevent this ruse.

Behind all of this nonsense are managers who continue to hold views about productivity from circa 1900. It is management with a stopwatch and clipboard dressed up in high-tech garb. It was a bad idea then and still is.

There is plenty of good evidence that workers can be just as, or more, productive working from home, or simply working without close monitoring. If the management cats back off, they might be surprised at the amount of mouse work that gets done.

Dr Jim Bright FAPS owns Bright and Associates, a career management consultancy, and is director of evidence & impact at BECOME Education. Email to [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @DrJimBright