AT&T’s Employee Attendance Tracking Was Inaccurate

AT&T is scaling back its employee tracking system after discovering that the system yielded inaccurate results that were “driving people to the brink of frustration,” according to a C-Suite executive.

Business Insider recently obtained leaked audio of an internal meeting last month where AT&T’s Chief Marketing and Growth Officer, Kellyn Kenny, said that her division was cutting back on “presence tracking” or monitoring employees working hours through badge swipes, laptop network connections, and mobile location data. AT&T as a whole is reducing its reliance on the tracking system for all salaried employees, the outlet reported.

AT&T workers have been back in the office five days a week since January, a move that was initially complicated by a lack of open desks and parking spaces at some locations. The company introduced the tracking system two years ago to catch employees who weren’t showing up to work, but the system has since hit a few snags. Employees have complained about inaccurate tracking, noting that the potential for incorrect reports could make them targets for layoffs.

Related: Amazon Is Reportedly Tracking ‘Coffee Badging’ Workers and Their Real In-Office Hours

AT&T workers told BI that their reports were routinely off by several hours, and that sometimes the system would stop tracking hours if they stepped out for lunch, failing to resume tracking when they returned. Additionally, if they badged into the office on a weekend to briefly get some work done, their daily average hours for the week would drop below the mandatory eight hours.

“We recognize that there are things about the [presence tracking] report that are not correct,” Kenny said at the meeting.

^{AT&T CEO John Stankey. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images}

An employee survey last month additionally revealed that workers were tired of the presence tracking report. For example, some were struggling to make it to doctors’ appointments on time without being penalized by the system. The survey asked employees whether they felt supported by AT&T’s “policies and systems,” and nearly half of Kenny’s organization said no, with some pointing to the presence report in their freeform responses.

“I now understand the level of anxiety that this report has created,” Kenny stated at the leaked meeting. “I also now understand how the fact that it is inaccurate is driving people to the brink of frustration, and it’s creating distrust.”

Related: Is Workplace Trust Dead? A ‘Big Four’ Firm Will Soon Use Location Data to Track Employees

Kenny mentioned that the system initially helped AT&T identify “freeloaders” who badged in, got a cup of coffee, and left after 10 minutes.

“We do not need this report for that purpose anymore, because we took action on the people who were the free riders,” Kenny said at the meeting.

The same survey showed that employee engagement declined at AT&T over the past year due to measures like the return-to-office mandate. In response to the survey results, AT&T CEO John Stankey wrote in a memo to staff in August that employees should get on board with the mandate or find work elsewhere.

Related: Here Are the Exact Salaries AT&T Pays Employees, From AI Engineers to Product Managers

Rivals like Verizon are using AT&T’s RTO mandate as a chance to poach workers who would prefer to work a hybrid schedule.

AT&T is also trying to cut down its workforce, per BI. It started the year with 140,990 employees, down from 160,700 workers in 2022. Most of its workforce, or about 123,967 employees as of this year, is based in the U.S.