On average, only around 60 percent of time at work is used productively.
Naturally, employers are looking to unlock as much of the remaining 40 percent as possible.
That’s why today, we’re going to take a look at one of the most popular methods of increasing productivity—electronic employee monitoring via software and hardware sensors. Here’s what the research tells us:
Monitoring boosts productivity for more straightforward and repetitive tasks, but hinders performance for more complex tasks.
A review of productivity research shows monitoring brings a significant, though limited, boost in worker performance.
Specifically, monitoring seems to improve the performance of workers who have already proved to be high achieving, or for tasks that are more hands-on and repetitive.
However, this productivity gain often comes with a downside, which is increased stress and a decrease in employee trust, which can lead to higher turnover. Additionally, the above productivity gains resulted in a net loss when workers had lower skill levels—potentially from being new on the job.
What’s the reason for this discrepancy?
A study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison suggests that electronic monitoring programs hurt performance when focused on boosting performance without making considerations for the added stress they might bring.
“Employees who had their performance electronically monitored perceived their working conditions as more stressful, and reported higher levels of job boredom, psychological tension, anxiety, depression, anger, health complaints and fatigue,” according to the UW-Madison Department of Industrial Engineering.
This suggests a tradeoff between added focus and the stress of knowing one is being watched. Although, It may leave an opening for employee monitoring that thoughtfully prevents massive spikes in stress—especially for those in already healthy workplace cultures.
And there’s evidence for this working, too. According to Teresa Amabile—a professor at Harvard Business School—the overall health of workplace culture also plays a large part in whether monitoring helps or hurts.
“If people feel able to experiment, potentially fail and learn from those lessons, then they can be motivated by gaining a better understanding of how they spend their days,” said, Amabile.
What is employee monitoring good for, then?
Aside from nominal gains in performance for particular workers, or for particularly simple tasks, employee monitoring carries benefits outside the realm of productivity.
Monitoring performance on the team level—as opposed to the individual—produces better outcomes. Preferred in Japan, group-level evaluations result in significantly less stressand performance gains on more complicated tasks.
Additionally, recording employee performance works well as a training tool. Recording is especially common in sales and customer service, where they’re used to pinpoint pitfalls and best practices.
Electronic monitoring of phones and emails is also especially useful for keeping track of inappropriate behavior. Few occurrences can slow down a workplace as an employee who bullies or belittles. Email logs can provide clear-cut evidence of wrongdoing.
Ultimately, increasing employee performance works best when it strikes a balance between considerations of stress and productivity. Merely increasing productivity for productivity’s sake runs the risk of tanking performance and leaving your office worse off than it was to begin with.
Employees appreciate working where they are trusted and can have some fun.
If you would like to learn more about how to build a productive and high-functioning team, set up a call today.