Research offers three ways leaders can navigate the benefits and backlash of using electronic monitoring systems.
February 20, 2024
Ghislain & Marie David de Lossy/Getty Images
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There’s a growing movement to track employee productivity through increasingly sophisticated technology, such as desktop surveillance, biometric smart badges, location tracking, or desk heat sensors. While this can be intrusive, it also presents opportunities for gaining profound insights into employee behavior, such as which applications employees use most frequently or whether employees are at risk of overworking based on their work patterns and productivity. While the ultimate decision to use these technologies typically comes from upper management, implementation and utilization of such systems typically falls on supervisors. New research suggests that when information obtained through monitoring is used for control purposes (e.g., performance review), employees were more likely to engage in counterproductive behavior, such as time thievery, inattentiveness, cyberloafing, or tardiness. However, when the information obtained through monitoring was used for feedback, employees continued to trust and maintain positive relationships with their supervisors and performed better in their jobs.
At the outset of pandemic office closures, 98 Buck Social, a social media marketing company based in Florida, installed an application on all employee computers that randomly captures screenshots of desktop activity every 10 minutes. Amazon and Facebook have shared that they’re tracking badge swipes to ensure that employees ordered to return to the office regularly report to work. JPMorgan Chase developed its own software to record how long employees spend on Zoom calls, emails, and spreadsheets, among other activities.
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Chase Thiel is the Bill Daniels Chair of Business Ethics and an associate professor of management at the University of Wyoming’s College of Business. His research examines causes of organizational misconduct through a behavioral lens, characteristics of moral people, and the role of leaders in the creation and maintenance of ethical workplaces.
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Shawn McClean is an assistant professor of management and McCasland Foundation Professor of American Free Enterprise at the University of Oklahoma’s Price College of Business. His research focuses on behavioral ethics, leadership, and the work-life interface.
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Jaron Harvey is an assistant professor of management at Utah Valley University’s Woodbury School of Business. His research focuses on employees’ engagement at work through the lenses of citizenship behavior and manager-employee interactions.
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Nick Prince is an assistant professor of management at the University of Wyoming. He teaches the MBA OB/HR class and undergraduate HR classes. His research focuses on international and strategic human resource management.
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