Technology now makes it possible for employers to keep track of virtually all workplace communications by any employee — on the phone and in cyberspace. Many employers are taking advantage of these tracking devices to monitor their workers’ use of the Internet, check email and review phone calls.
Employers may feel they have a legitimate reason to keep track of how their employees spend their work hours. They may want to ensure their employees are not giving trade secrets to competitors, engaging in illegal conduct at work, or using company communications equipment to harass their co-workers.
However, this approach may be counter-productive. It destroys trust, an important ingredient for success, writes Jeffrey Pfeffer, Professor of Organisational Behaviour at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Using examples, data and insights that challenge conventional management wisdom, Pfeffer explains why monitoring destroys trust in a chapter from his recent book, What Were They Thinking? Unconventional Wisdom About Management.
The Facts
- 59 percent of all web purchases are made from the workplace.
- 47 percent of employees spend at least half an hour a day cruising the web for personal reasons.
- 35 percent of employee Internet activity is for personal reasons.
- 70 percent of all Internet porn traffic occurs during work hours.
Employer Reaction
- 60 percent of employers use software to monitor incoming and outgoing email.
- 25 percent have terminated an employee for violating email policy.
- 76 percent monitor their website connections.
- 65 percent use software to block connections to some websites.
- 26 percent have fired workers for misusing the Internet.
- 80 percent have policies governing personal use of email and the Internet.
Consequences of Monitoring
- If people are working longer hours, absenteeism will increase as people attend to personal issues.
- Research shows that people are less satisfied with their job and their supervisor when they are being watched.
- People rebel against perceived constraints (psychological reactance).
- People want more of what they cannot have (principle of scarcity).
- If people are labelled as untrustworthy and dishonest, they can respond by living up to that expectation (self-fulfilling prophesy).
- Surveillance encourages those in authority to entrap the people being watched, thus justifying the need for surveillance in the first place.
- Monitoring employees makes it very hard to create a climate of trust.
These reasons explain why companies that actually achieve competitive advantage through their people management do not over-control or monitor how their employees spend their time.
Jim Goodnight, co-founder and CEO of SAS, considers that employees are responsible for doing their work in an effective and creative fashion, and how they spend their time and what they do with their computers at work is pretty much up to them.
The basic prescription is simple. Before you implement the latest technology to monitor your workers, ask yourself what your decision says about how you think about your people.
If you don’t trust your employees, maybe you should get different ones. If you do trust them, or hope to build trust, treat them accordingly.
