‘Cannot be allowed to stand’: Why every Aussie should be outraged by Suzie Cheikho’s sacking

Suzie Cheikho’s wild WFH sacking got the nation talking this week. But there’s a disturbing reason why we should all be on her side.

COMMENT

We need to talk about Suzie Cheikho.

Ms Cheikho is the 38-year-old Insurance Australia Group employee who was fired while working from home, although “working” is perhaps a strong word for whatever it is she was doing.

This was evidenced by IAG data retrieved from her laptop which showed that she had “very low keystroke activity”, which is not a euphemism for marriage but rather the number of times a person hits the buttons on their computer keyboard.

And apparently Ms Cheikho, who insists she was in fact working, performed zero strokes over 117 hours in October last year, zero over 143 hours the following month and zero over 60 hours in December – which by a more generous assessment would have constituted a remarkable improvement.

However, the heartless beancounters at IAG calculated her total output and concluded she recorded an average of a mere 54 strokes per hour across the entire period for which she was monitored.

Someone undergoing the strictures of rigor mortis would probably have been able to produce a similar body of work.

IAG’s assessment that Ms Cheikho “was not presenting for work and performing work as required” is perhaps the understatement of the century, a bit like a weatherman saying Hiroshima experienced hotter than usual conditions on August 6, 1945.

Suzie Cheikho recorded an average of a mere 54 strokes per hour across the entire period for which she was monitored. Picture: Sunrise

Little wonder then that the Fair Work Commission upheld IAG’s findings and agreed it was within its rights to fire her. Certainly, it’s hard to imagine her dismissal had a crippling effect on the company’s productivity.

But that is not the point. The point is that a company monitoring every single micro-action of an employee – literally to the letter – is so creepy and clinical that it cannot be allowed to stand.

In other words, #IstandwithSuzie.

Not because she shouldn’t have been fired or that she didn’t effectively beg to be fired.

But because the method and the metrics used to fire her are so chillingly robotic that if we don’t say something now, then all of our heads will be on the chopping block.

Which brings us, appropriately enough, to the guillotine.

This was, of course, the instrument of terror deployed so effectively and repeatedly during the French Revolution and beyond as a means of execution for enemies of the state.

For almost all of us today, the very thought of the guillotine is so darkly grotesque it sends chills down the spine – even though that is a sensation it was specifically designed to prevent.

In fact, the guillotine was a product of the enlightenment, a more humane means of killing people instantly and painlessly as opposed to the lengthier and riskier process of hanging.

Trust the French to produce such logic.

Of course, the opposite proved to be the case. Having developed a death machine of such lightning-fast speed – with the added faux salve for the conscience of the executioners – the ideologically impure were slaughtered in their thousands with industrial efficiency.

Sacked insurance worker Suzie Cheikho lashed out at her employer on live TV this week. Picture: Sunrise

What if we had that today? While the masses might have cheered, pretty soon they would be rubbing their own necks as the rope was pulled on traitors 1001, 1002 and 1003.

But just as powerful as the zeal for revolutionaries to eliminate people on ideological metrics when the technology presents itself is the temptation for corporations to eliminate workers on productivity metrics when they have the same cold calculator.

Ms Cheikho was clearly an average worker for a period of time as all those metrics clearly showed in her unfair dismissal case – although the fact that she brought an unfair dismissal case at all shows at least she can muster a bit of initiative when she wants to.

But if we are all reduced to our keystrokes in our workplaces, we are nothing more than machines. And if that is how companies are going to consider employees, then they should at least have the decency to say so.

Needless to say, I am a big fan of intense keystroke activity – I will have probably committed around 5000 of them by the end of this column alone – and I am a big supporter of people working hard.

I am also a devotee of the endless pursuit of economic productivity. However, there is an element of economic productivity that is often forgotten, and that is respect.

Having been both a boss and a worker, I can assure all comers that nothing will ensure better results and more productivity than respect – enthusiasm, appreciation and encouragement are of 1000 per cent more value than an infinite number of performance reviews, let alone keyboard statistics.

If you tell your workers they are great and show them how to be great, they will inevitably deliver great things.

But if you just count their keystrokes, the number you come up with will inevitably, eventually, be zero.