With nearly half the U.S. labor force working from home in the wake of Covid-19 (according to new research coming out of MIT), managers and executives at every organizational level are learning about remote leadership in real time. As the global economy works through what may be the largest natural experiment in remote work and distributed teams ever conducted, many are finding it easier than expected to transition to remote operations. However, many are also finding it more difficult than expected to maintain their sense of connection, culture, and organizational identity.

Few businesses ever achieve the promise of a “paperless office” before the pandemic. However, firms in developed countries have embraced personal computers, digital workflow solutions, and created nearly ubiquitous IT networks in pursuit of financial and environmental benefits. In hindsight, this trend clearly positioned businesses to embrace work from home policies with relative ease in response to the pandemic. After all, computers can generally transmit electronic data around the world just as easily as they can send it down the hall. Sadly, human relationships have not mapped themselves onto digital processes quite so readily.

Businesses are playing catch up when it comes to organizational leadership and management. Executives are looking for ways to digitize the aspects of their role that fall outside the realm of workflow, productivity software, and reporting. They want leading indicators to forecast performance, the ability to correct issues in mid-process, and crave a digital replacement for the feeling of connection and awareness that they had with “their people” when they could interact with and observe them face to face. This desire for a digital line of sight has led many firms to embrace employee surveillance software as they transition employees to work from home during the pandemic.

It is understandable that managers would embrace digital oversight that feels comfortable and fundamentally similar to traditional oversight methods. But in the words of Jeff Goldblum’s character Dr. Malcolm from the first Jurassic Park movie, the emerging surveillance software has many managers “so preoccupied with whether or not they [can] that they [don’t] stop to think if they should.” From the employee perspective, these tools represent a fundamental shift in their relationship with their employer. It is telling that employee descriptions for these tools regularly include terms like “tattleware,” “nanny states,” “spy-ware,” and micromanagement.

Employees generally accept the idea of performing their work in view of colleagues and supervisors when reporting to work on-site. As one individual among many being observed, and with a reciprocal ability to observe management, the level of scrutiny feels appropriate and balanced. Digital surveillance tools upset this balance; giving managers an unblinking digital eye in the cloud with the ability to gather permanent data, tied directly to individual employees automatically. Data flows in one direction with employees generally unable to observe their upline in return. While it is perfectly legal for employers to monitor employees use of their digital infrastructure, such tools cross an ethical line for many. For those that value the legal protections provided for residential privacy in other contexts, the feeling that their employer’s right to monitor them at home trumps their right to privacy may be especially repugnant and can undermine trust in the employee-employer relationship.

A google scholar search for “employee happiness and productivity” will return more than 250,000 results from peer-reviewed sources in 0.12 seconds pointing to decades of research and practice telling us that happy employees are more productive. If that is not enough incentive to think twice before adopting employee surveillance tools, consider this:

What do you want employees to believe about what your organization values?

Nanny-ware, keystroke logging, and trackers that monitor for inactivity send a clear message that you value activity and time on task enough to spend resources to actively measure them. Is that the message you want to send? Will it provide the best leading performance indicator? Are there other metrics that may be more important such as those related to employee productivity, lifetime value, or customer retention that may generate a better return on your investment? Are there more productive things that you’d prefer your managers be doing than reviewing exception reports for employees who may print materials at home or do their best work on the phone and let their mouse lay idle longer than expected?

Have you quantified the value of your employee outputs? How much does activity tracking really matter for employees that are hitting their productivity targets, providing the value that you have asked of them in their role, and making a positive contribution to the culture of the firm? When employees fall short, do your managers have the skills to address the performance issue over distance? Employee monitoring software makes it easy to gather data to recreate traditional line of sight management techniques. However, just because something is easy to measure, does not make it a meaningful data point to improve performance. To be sure, discrete time studies are valuable inputs for job design. Usage monitoring is critical for gauging infrastructure demand and informing resource allocation decisions. However, leaders should take a considered and deliberate approach to developing their policies on employee surveillance that monitors individual employees.

The organizations that will emerge first from the pandemic will not be those that find ways to feel better about employee activity. They will be the firms that figure out how to be better at delivering value, holding on to top talent, and producing results than their competition and consistently generate positive net profits. Do not let employee monitoring software lure you into the trap of measuring what is easy instead of what matters. Figuring out what really matters, finding new ways to measure it, and monitoring progress so that you can keep your newly distributed team connected and pulling together is not easy. It is a big job and outside perspective can help.

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References:

When Big Brother Joins the Team: Trust, Productivity, and Remote Work

A leader for all seasons?

Values-based leadership: show them what you are made of