Experts explain how Canadian employers should use data to build trust and growth – and not drift into surveillance and turnover
Amazon has upped the ante again with its employee performance management practices; this time, it’s an internal dashboard allowing managers to closely track the movements of their corporate employees.
As part of its overarching “Forte” system, the dashboards flag “low-time,” “zero” and “unassigned building” badgers, based on swipes in and out of physical locations.
The guidelines also allow managers to use their own discretion in choosing how they will use the dashboards to enforce Amazon’s full-time in-office policy.
Allowing manager discretion aligns with what is key to balancing return-to-office (RTO) expectations and employee needs: a “more selective RTO,” says Peter Sherer, professor of organizational behaviour and human resources at the Haskayne School of Business at the University of Calgary.
Designing RTO policies: consistency, flexibility
Internal Amazon documents shared with Business Insider describe the tracking dashboards as a way to “surface employees operating significantly outside documented in-office expectations” and to support in-person collaboration and culture.
Sherer concedes there are legitimate reasons for the RTO pushes we’ve seen of late – the “water-cooler effect” being one of them – but adds that any system scrutinizing attendance should be tempered with discernment about individual circumstances and performance.
“You need people to be in the office, because that's one way you get new ideas,” he says. “That wouldn't necessarily happen if they were at home.”
However, he stresses that bringing employees into the office doesn’t automatically translate into increased culture: “Culture works best when it's informal and it's not ‘forced’ on people.”
He adds that for junior staff, in particular, informal “on-the-job training” is also lost when employees aren’t in the office regularly.
‘Sweet spot’ of employee monitoring
Zety’s 2025 Workplace Monitoring Report, based on a survey of 1,000 U.S. workers, found strong resistance to intense scrutiny: one in nine said they had quit a job because of “extreme accountability or monitoring,” and one in six said they’ve considered it.
Many pointed to decreased job satisfaction, a “culture of fear” and increased burnout when reporting demands became too rigid.
In principle, asking people to track their work can be positive when it is framed and used properly, because it can give employees opportunities to track their own work and be prepared and empowered when review season comes around, says Jasmine Escalera, career expert with Zety.
“If handled correctly, this is actually a great thing for employees.”
The same tool can land very differently if employees see it as development-oriented or as a signal that leadership assumes they are slacking, she says. Problems arise when monitoring is clearly driven by productivity above employee needs or concerns.
“If it's done in a way of surveillance and monitoring, then of course it's going to feel like ‘They don't trust me, and so therefore I don't trust them,’” says Escalara, “and it's going to be more combative, rather than collaborative.”
Pushing back against remote work ‘free-for-all’
For those who are implementing time-tracking procedures, Escalara recommends early communication, giving employees time to consider options, talk to their manager — and potentially quit.
“I believe the most successful way to implement something like dashboards, and new ways of monitoring performance, are always going to be about understanding what's best for your employees and how it helps them, and then communicating that outwardly,” she says.
“Ultimately, this conversation really is about ‘Do you care about your employees, are you communicating the things that you're doing effectively, and are you really engaging with the temperature of your employees?’”
Sherer explains how during the pandemic, many organizations found themselves facing a “free-for-all” situation with employees working remotely without policies or expectations set in place.
“I think this is somewhat a reaction to the world when we had COVID,” he says.
“And now employers are pushing back, and it seems like we're going a little far in the other direction in some organizations.”
Balancing structure with flexibility
Employee attendance tracking isn’t a new concept; he points out that at Amazon, what's changed is that managers are now able to see individual employee information.
The long-term challenge for employers will be balancing structure with flexibility, Sherer says, in a way that feels fair and will retain talent who value flexibility. This means creating policies that acknowledge various employee needs – within boundaries.
“Neuro-sensitive people, people with immune issues, people who have disabilities that make it very challenging to get to the office – we have to consider those kind of folks,” he says.
“There has to be policies and practices, and there has to be some way to gain some consistency while recognizing employee needs.”
