Last Updated:November 20, 2025, 15:48 IST

After the news broke out, people began reacting to it. While some criticised the move, others turned it into a meme-fest, with some even suggesting solutions to the problem.

IT giant Cognizant is reportedly set to introduce a new monitoring system to track employee activity on company-issued laptops and PCs. The company has begun training select managers on using tracking tools such as ProHance, which will monitor mouse and keyboard usage to gauge productivity. It will flag users based on inactivity levels.

Employees may be marked “idle” after 300 seconds of inactivity and tagged “away from system” if their device remains inactive for 15 minutes. Such tracking tools generally reveal login times, open applications and time spent on tasks, offering a minute-level breakdown of the workday. The company has told staff the data will be used to understand workflows and improve utilisation, not to evaluate individual performance at this stage.

What Was The POV Of Cognizant?

A Cognizant spokesperson said, as quoted by the Mint, “We occasionally use various productivity measurement tools, a common industry practice, in select business process management or intuitive operations and automation projects, at the request of customers. The purpose is to help better understand the client process steps and related time metrics to assess process design inefficiencies.”

“Also, the tools are used only after obtaining the consent of employees and it is made clear that these are not used for performance evaluation. Additionally, these tools have no impact on the composition of teams engaged in these projects and any suggestion to the contrary is incorrect,“ they further mentioned.

And The Memefest Aftermath…

After the news broke out, people began reacting to it. While some criticised the move, others turned it into a meme-fest, with some even suggesting solutions to the problem.

One user shared a short clip, which showed the mouse tied to a table fan with a swing, and wrote, “My Dear @Cognizant bandhua Majdoors, here is a great Indian jugad to keep your mouse busy.”

A video recreated the ‘Arey Baap Re’ viral meme showing how the employees are getting reminded that they forgot to ‘show themselves’ active while having lunch.

The Internet also took a sly dig at Narayan Murthy, whose work-life balance comments had created a stir back in 2023, showing that, after all this time, he has found a worthy competitor.

Creativity went into another level when the Internet users were reminded of the ‘office hack’ scene of Vivek Oberoi from Grand Masti where he uses gram seeds and calls pigeons who come to his keyboard and start eating them. If not seen, one might feel that someone is typing on a keyboard constantly.

Amid all this, it will be interesting to see how the Cognizant employees settle with this new regime of work they will be going through in the upcoming days.

Do you think this is a good decision, or should authorities at the workplace be a little more lenient?

Buzz Staff

A team of writers at News18.com bring you stories on what’s creating the buzz on the Internet while exploring science, cricket, tech, gender, Bollywood, and culture.

A team of writers at News18.com bring you stories on what’s creating the buzz on the Internet while exploring science, cricket, tech, gender, Bollywood, and culture.

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