Today, monitoring technologies are increasingly inexpensive—and staggeringly expansive. This has made it easier than ever for managers to intensively monitor employees at work. These technologies run the gamut, from body-worn cameras and closed-circuit televisions, to traceable identification cards and keystroke trackers. Managers in banks, hospitals, police departments, call-centers, and retail outlets who want to know what employees are up to can now quite easily do so.
Why Monitoring Your Employees’ Behavior Can Backfire
Today, the availability of monitoring technologies that are increasingly inexpensive—and staggeringly expansive—has made it easier than ever for managers to intensively monitor employees at work. These technologies run the gamut, from body-worn cameras and closed-circuit televisions, to traceable identification cards and keystroke trackers. The managerial aspiration for such increased surveillance is clear: less misbehavior and implicitly better performance. What’s less obvious, though, is what other behaviors such surveillance might promote. Research, based on interviews with 89 Transportation Security Administration (TSA) employees and their managers a decade after 9/11, suggests that increased monitoring can lead to a cycle of increasingly coercive surveillance. Ultimately, employers may be unaware that the effects of surveillance may go well beyond the initial, and often relatively innocuous, reason they chose to monitor employees.