Ever since the pandemic moved workers to home offices and away from their bosses’ watchful eyes, companies have worried are people really working as much as they’re supposed to? Despite surging productivity in the work from home era, this anxiety has persisted. For relief, companies have increasingly turned to new digital tools that can apply a level of oversight that even the most hovering of managers couldn’t achieve. These tools, marketed as “productivity” measurement applications, identify employees by name and, track how they spend their time — logging keystrokes, counting messages, recoding their screens, even logging when they step away from their desks for bathroom-breaks.
Monitoring Individual Employees Isn’t the Way to Boost Productivity
Ever since workers moved from offices to work-from-home setups, companies have worried about how they’re spending their time. Many have bought invasive “productivity monitoring” software to keep tabs on people — logging keystrokes, timing how long they’re away from their computers, even watching them through cameras. But these tools are about control more than productivity. They reflect a “squeeze ’em” view of work that uses superficial metrics that measure busyness, and employees know it — and often resent it. There is, however, a better and more empathic way to use data to improve productivity: look at where the company can improve, not individuals. By using anonymized data about how people work — where they encounter friction, where broken processes make their jobs harder — companies can reveal what about their systems isn’t working. In other words, this data should be used as a mirror, not a microscope. To do this effectively, in a way that aligns company and employee interests, employers should: make individuals anonymous, collect data at the team level, make participation opt-in, share the data with workers, invite collective problem solving, and empower teams to use this data on the local level.