People all across New Jersey are working from home because of the COVID-19 pandemic. But are employers able to track who is really working? Jersey City officials have come up with a way to track how productive city employees are when working from home.

“Working in the age of COVID has been very challenging,” says Jersey City Chief Information Officer of Innovation Melissa Kozakiewicz.

Kozakiewicz says that she has chosen to mostly work remotely during the pandemic as a way to stay healthy and to supervise her 6- and 8-year-old sons as they attend online school.

“Being able to find new ways to balance their work and my work has been a challenge, but also it’s giving me an opportunity to be a little bit connected to their work,” she says.

Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop says that he wants to make sure employees like Kozakiewicz are being productive. He has advocated for city employees to work from home and introduced an optional four-day workweek.

“The reality is that in today’s world with COVID, companies and governments need to be flexible…and understanding the hardships that families are going through,” Fulop says.

But the shift in work flow does not come without some risks.

“With government money, there is a fine line between ‘work from home’ and a ‘no-show job,’” says Fulop.

To prevent slacking off, employees who take the work-from-home option will be closely monitored by a software customized for their job description.

“The city’s going to have the ability to see that a person is actually working at a desk at home, doing their job responsibilities, as opposed to kind of just checking in and doing nothing during the course of the day, which wouldn’t be acceptable,” the mayor says.

Employees who aren’t utilizing their work days productively will end up back working in person at City Hall. But if the new way of working from home actually works, it could lead to a more permanent option.