TikTok tracks attendance when returning to the office with a monitoring tool

• TikTok is cracking down on its back-to-the-office policy with new tools to monitor employees.
• The social app has implemented a new tool called MyRTO that monitors personal attendance in the office.
• MyRTO tracks badge swipes and asks employees to explain “deviations” from expected in-person attendance.

TikTok doesn’t just track users’ locations anymore. Now, it has moved on to monitoring the whereabouts of its employees.

New York times Reports indicate that the social media company has implemented a new internal program called MyRTO to track and implement a strict return-to-office policy. The outlet reported that MyRTO monitors badge swipings done by employees when entering the office and asks workers to explain “deviations” from expected in-person attendance.

After implementing an in-person policy last October that required U.S.-based employees to come into the office at least three times a week as coronavirus fears eased, the company threatened to fire workers whose home address didn’t match their assigned office address, according to the previously mentioned Insider. .

TikTok has previously faced criticism and been banned in several countries due to its use of “Big Brother-type surveillance”. Forbes It stated that its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, plans to use the app to track Americans using GPS information collected through the app. But this week, the company notified employees that it will unveil new internal tracking software designed to “provide greater clarity and context to both employees and leaders regarding their RTO expectations and timelines within the office, and help foster more transparent communications,” a company spokesperson said. . ByteDance told Insider.

TikTok representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Insider.

Managers across industries are increasingly turning to productivity monitoring software for remote and hybrid workers, monitoring how long users are logged in while working from home and taking random screenshots of workers’ screens. For those forced to return to offices, some companies are implementing new attendance-tracking software and deploying sensors to measure how full desks are and determine when a person is sitting at their desk or using a conference room.

But while CEOs of big-name companies are increasingly touting return-to-office policies as the best way to do business — Elon Musk, for example, went so far as to call remote work “morally wrong” — employees at tech companies are pushing such policies. . The states expressed their dissatisfaction in the form of strikes and even resignations to maintain the workers’ point of view equivalent to an 8% raise.