Itau’s Work-From-Home Layoffs Spark Debate on Staff Surveillance

At Brazilian lender Itau Unibanco Holding SA, two lists were circulating among its upper echelons earlier this month. One was a roster of employees deemed by the bank to have breached remote-working policies. The other included names of staff whose work-from-home activity was lagging behind the bank’s average.

By Monday of last week, the outcome of this exercise was clear. Some 1,000 of the bank’s hybrid workers had been terminated after a months-long surveillance of their digital activity, according to people familiar with the matter. The dismissed employees had plunging activity levels, logging hours during periods of inactivity in ...