China tech firm develops controversial IT system that can predict whether an employee is about to resign
- A user of professional networking app Maimai said he was fired after his company found out he had been applying for other jobs, using the system
- The system, built by Sangfor Technologies, analyses the resignation intentions of employees by looking at their online activities
A Shenzhen-listed company has stirred controversy by developing a system that can predict whether an employee is about to resign by spying on activities, such as browsing job recruitment pages and sending job application emails.
The system, built by Sangfor Technologies, gained public attention after a user on Maimai.cn, a professional networking app, said he was fired after his company found out using the monitoring system that he had been applying for other jobs.
“My boss said he knows exactly what I’m doing during work hours,” he wrote on the platform, attaching a screenshot showing the “resignation analysis system”.
Sangfor Technologies did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
According to patent registration information on data analytics firm Qichacha, the Shenzhen company applied for a patent in 2018 for a system that analyses the resignation intentions of employees by reading the information they send to recruitment websites, social media platforms and email systems.
According to Qichacha, the system can spy on an employee’s online activities in the office to check whether an employee has checked job websites, sent applications and then rank employees by the level of perceived resignation risk.