'It communicates a low-trust environment'
Employers are legally allowed to keep digital tabs on workers but the pushback might make the exercise not worth the effort.
A recent survey showed that employers who do electronic monitoring of workers are having trouble keeping them employed.
Tech managers see more people leaving their jobs (28%) while conversely, 27% report having difficulty bringing in new talent, according to a survey done by digital employee experience company 1E.
More than half of technology workers (52%) would turn down an otherwise desirable new job if they knew the employer used productivity surveillance technology, found the survey.
What is the business case for monitoring workers?
Many employers are taking the wrong tack on this, says an HR expert.
“It comes down to trust: if you’re using electronic monitoring for security reasons and there’s a good business reason behind doing it, great. If you are using it to monitor performance because somebody on the team might be a poor performer and may not be delivering at the highest levels, our philosophy on that would be deal with the performance issue, don’t monitor everybody,” says Paola Accettola, principal at True North HR Consulting in Collingwood, Ont.
“It’s like creating a blanket policy because somebody breaks a policy: you wouldn’t go and create policy after policy for all human behaviour, you would deal with the one that’s been the anomaly.”
That trust also has a great impact on retention, found another survey, as 46% of respondents would stay in there current jobs because they trust the employer. On the other hand, 35% of employees who don’t trust their employers would look elsewhere within a year.
The survey, done by business intelligence firm Visier, heard from 1,000 full-time U.S.- based employees.
“No employee wants to feel on edge or paranoid at work and that’s reflected in the findings of the 1E report, which demonstrated an increase in quitting rates as well as difficulties in hiring whenever monitoring tools are used,” says Paul Rubenstein, CHRO at Visier in Vancouver.
By installing such software, the wrong data is uncovered, he says.
“Traditional monitoring tools like those that track mouse movement or screen time do a great job at quantifying the wrong metrics. Rather than tracking true productivity, they are merely tracking an action, which doesn’t directly connect to the impact an employee has on business results.”
If an employer does have a legitimate reason to implement monitoring of workers, it should be clearly justified, says Accettola.
“The most important thing for employees is what they’re going to want to understand is why are you doing this? Why is this necessary and how will it impact me as an employee, because there’s going to be a certain level of personal exchanges have to happen during the day like, doctor’s appointment, or somebody emails you out. How are all those things going to be managed in this situation? And how can I be assured of my privacy in that situation?”
Make the reasoning crystal clear to employees
When notifying workers that the tools will be deployed, it’s important to “be transparent about its use. If you are putting software in place then be honest about it, and make sure employees can see their data,” says Rubenstein.
“People need to understand the intent of how the tools are used to coach and improve, not just evaluate employees. If this is a secret litmus test for employees, then you are setting up an environment that incentivizes them to game the system. Being deceitful about the use of monitoring tools is putting that relationship of trust at risk. Employees don’t want to be blindsided or lied to.”
When clients ask for advice on installing the software, this openness is key to success, according to Accettola.
“We always err on the side of transparency, honesty, and really being clear about why you’re doing, what you’re doing so that the employee can wrap their head around it. Will they all be cool about it? Probably not but as long as they know the why and policies like you need to have a really clear policy around it.”
The perceptions of insiders and outsiders
But when thinking about what message it sends to outside candidates, “it’s not good,” she says.
“It is almost as bad as saying, ‘We don’t offer hybrid.’ We do a lot of high-volume recruiting and if an organization says we don’t do it, most candidates will say: ‘No, thanks.’ It’s the same with monitoring: what it does is it communicates a low-trust environment.
“I’m an adult, I can manage my work and I want to walk into a culture that’s quite trusting. This communicates the opposite to me, unless they have a very clear reason why they’re doing it,” says Accettola.
The messaging to workers is similarly negative, according to Rubenstein.
“While we can’t directly say that monitoring tools affect retention rates, it was clear in our survey that those employees that had monitoring tools in place were far more likely to participate in performative tasks, making it appear they were being more productive than perhaps they were overall. It ultimately comes down to the culture element of the business; if employees feel watched, and feel as if they have to act in a performative manner in order to remain in their roles, then of course there is risk they may move on to other organizations that aren’t implementing the same level of monitoring.”
