Working remotely has become the norm for many, particularly since the Covid-19 pandemic hit, allowing people the flexibility of not having to physically be in their office. This shift has opened up opportunities for some to take on a second job. This was precisely the case at Metrickal, a remote recruitment company based in Barcelona, Spain, where all 10 employees work remotely without the need to step into an office.
Patrick Synge, the co-founder and chief commercial officer of Metrickal, shared a striking incident with Business Insider. One employee, originally doing quite well in his role since being hired in 2022, began to slip in his performance. Synge noticed that “He was hired in 2022, and in the beginning, he did his job very well. But then, I started to receive complaints from clients about missed assignments and deadlines.”
The quality of the employee’s work started to decline, raising suspicions among the management. “These complaints from clients started to become somewhat regular,” Synge explained. It was when the employee started refusing shifts that he would normally take, that Synge suspected something was off. Despite lacking concrete proof initially, the situation prompted him to closely monitor the employee’s performance.
In December, Metrickal implemented a time-tracking software called DeskTime, not specifically because of this employee, but to better understand staff productivity with hopes of transitioning to a four-day work week. The software included a feature where it would take screenshots, revealing that the employee was simultaneously working for another company. “After a few weeks, I looked through the tracking data of the struggling employee and noticed there was another company’s name — a US business — that regularly appeared in the data,” Synge disclosed.
The conclusive evidence came from the software data and screenshots showing the employee engaged in tasks for another company during his shift. “It became clear to me that this employee had worked on some other company’s tasks. I fired them the next day,” Synge stated.
This decisive move came after noticing the employee’s dedication to his role at Metrickal had severely dropped, dedicating about half his working hours to the other company. Synge concluded that the combination of missed deadlines, unresponsiveness, and lack of flexibility were clear indicators that the employee’s focus was divided, and firing him was inevitable.