With more workers carrying out their duties from home since the pandemic, many employers have attempted to monitor their staff. However, a new study from The Harvard Business Review found that monitoring employees actually makes them more likely to break the rules.
The research involved two studies, and the first surveyed a mix of more than 100 non-monitored and monitored employees across the US. The first study found that monitored employees were substantially more likely to take unapproved breaks, disregard instructions, damage workplace property, steal office equipment, and purposefully work at a slow pace, among other rule-breaking behaviors.
For the second study, which was carried out in order to prove causation, the Harvard Business Review asked 200 US-based employees to complete a series of tasks, telling half of them that they would be under electronic surveillance whilst working. They also gave the study’s participants an opportunity to cheat and found that the likelihood of cheating was higher amongst those who were told they were being monitored.
Harvard Business Review said their studies showed that monitoring employees causes them to subconsciously feel that they are less responsible for their own conduct, which makes them more likely to act immorally.
They said the study’s monitored participants were more likely to report that the authority figure overseeing their surveillance was responsible for their behavior, while the employees who weren’t monitored were more likely to take responsibility for their actions. Harvard Business Review said this reduction in agency made the monitored employees more likely to engage in behaviour usually considered immoral.
However, the study also found that when employees feel that they are being treated fairly, they are less likely to suffer a drop in agency and are thus less likely to lose their sense of moral responsibility in response to monitoring. The monitored participants were also less likely to cheat if they felt they were treated justly.
The Harvard Business Review made several recommendations for how employers can enhance perceptions of justice and preserve employees’ sense of agency:
- Rather than unilaterally implementing a monitoring system, leaders should find ways to give employees visibility and input into when surveillance is appropriate and when it should be off-limits. Employers should then keep to these boundaries.
- Employers should also find ways to give employees access to their own data, as well as aggregated, anonymised data collected from relevant teams. That data should, in turn, be used in ways that benefit employees.
- Leaders should also do their best to communicate openly and transparently with employees about what data will be collected and how it will be used.
James Cook
