October 17, 2022

Equifax used its own worker monitoring product, Work Number, to monitor 1,000 remote workers and fired 24 who were found juggling two jobs.

“Equifax recently conducted an investigation into a number of employees suspected of holding dual, full-time employment that conflicted with their roles at our company. As a result, several employees who violated our company code of Conduct and outside employment policy, which were in effect at the time of the investigation were recently terminated,” said Equifax spokesperson Kate Walker.

Equifax used The Work Number and other employee monitoring methods to search the work history of more than 1,000 employees and contractors to identify any overlapping payment periods reported by other companies.

It discovered which employees were violating its employee code of conduct, which requires employees to always disclose external employment relationships and discuss them with their supervisor. It also reportedly flagged 283 contractors suspected of dual employment, although it is unclear whether these contractors have also been dismissed.

Some employees were also suspected of dialing into Equifax interviews from other job sites, and Equifax began tagging every employee with unusually low VPN usage, less than 13 hours a week.

One of the fired employees told Insider that when he took up his second job, he did not know Equifax’s code of conduct, while a current employee told Insider that Equifax shouldn’t be using The Work Number data to spy on its own employees.

Although the Equifax investigation targeted employees with two or more jobs, the company said that was not the only reason it laid off 24 employees.

The sources for this piece include an article in ArsTechnica.