| Worker surveillance is backfiring on employers |
An increasing number of employers are embracing workplace monitoring because they believe it will ensure the productivity of remote employees, but there’s mounting evidence that electronic surveillance can, in some cases, do more harm than good: surveillance can lead to stress, cause employees to quit and even make workers do their job worse – on purpose. David Welsh, a professor at Arizona State University, who researches organizational and behavioral ethics, says being monitored could make employees more likely to break rules. In one study, he and his research colleagues found that U.S. employees who were under surveillance took more unapproved breaks, intentionally worked more slowly and stole more office equipment than their un-monitored peers. Meanwhile, Rudolf Siegel, a researcher at Universität des Saarlandes in Germany, and co-author of a recent meta-analysis on the effects of electronic monitoring, says “what was really surprising is that we found no positive effect on performance.” Data showed that monitoring employees offered no benefits, and instead damaged workplace culture and encouraged counterproductive behavior. Karen Levy, associate professor in the Department of Information Science at Cornell University, observes: “It raises our stress levels to be under observation all the time, and it impinges on our sense of autonomy and dignity . . . So, managers who over-monitor workers may also see people leave for workplaces where they feel more respected.”
