JP Morgan’s New Tech Monitors Employee’s Keystrokes and Meetings. The Bank Says It’s for Their Wellbeing

The software will compare the junior employees’ computer activity to their reported hours.

BY MOSES JEANFRANCOIS, NEWS WRITER @MOSESJEANS

Illustration: Getty Images

While workplace surveillance is hardly groundbreaking, a new initiative from JP Morgan is drawing the attention of employees. New technology being deployed by the company is set to track things like keyboard strokes, video calls, and meetings for junior bankers and compare them to their reported weekly hours.  

The initiative is meant to objectively measure the workload done by the bank’s analysts and associates. JP Morgan is looking to roll out the program more widely across the company, the Financial Times reports. 

Bank Says It’s Not About Surveillance

“Much like the weekly screen time summaries on a smartphone, this tool is about awareness, not enforcement,” JP Morgan said in a statement. “It’s designed to support transparency, wellbeing, and encourage open conversations about workload.” 

Junior employees at the company have been said to be underreporting their hours, leaving it to senior management to deal with the discrepancies in their paperwork and timesheets. At many lending firms, junior staffers are now responsible for logging their own hours and uploading them directly into an internal tracking portal. 

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Growing Trend on Wall Street

Employee‑monitoring tools, often referred to as ‘bossware’, have become far more common across financial services, a shift accelerated by the rise of remote work during the pandemic.

Goldman Sachs, another leading global investment banker, has been tracking their employees’ work as well. Junior analysts at Goldman Sachs reported tensions in their workplace due to the surveillance system calling it ‘inhumane’. 

According to a report by the New York Post, Goldman employees took to Blind, a corporate message board that allows for anonymous posting, to complain. “In our team meeting, [my] manager showed us the Excel where the [managing directors] are tracking which department has not met in-office commitments,” one wrote.

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