As organisations struggle to play catch up in the mass work from home experiment that has taken place over the last year, many are struggling with the conundrum of how to monitor productivity when they can’t see their staff. This has led to a rise in investment into data driven monitoring activity such as email traffic, mouse movement and log in time. You would think this would help drive productivity, but instead it appears the reverse is true. A recently published study by the research firm Gartner, found that employees are nearly two times more likely to pretend to be working when their employers use tracking systems to monitor their output. Such Big-Brother attempts are clearly backfiring.
The world of work is changing like never before and the rise of AI and Machine Learning mean that any job that can be accurately measured through a series of data points should be automated. The jobs that remain, require more uniquely human skills such as creativity and relationship building, activities that cannot be easily measured. Monitoring your employees will stifle these skills, demotivate your employees, and drive your best talent to other firms. As Carol Cochran, vice president of people and culture at remote career site FlexJobs says, “Our role as managers is to create an environment where people can do their best work. It’s really hard to do your best work if you feel like you are not trusted.”
So how do you ensure your employees are working? The answer is you can’t, but you were never able to anyway, even when you could see someone sat at their desk. Instead, you should invest in your Employee Value Propositions (EVP), creating a workplace and culture that attracts the very best talent. According to McKinsey, these high performers are 800% more productive than their average counterpart when performing complex tasks. So don’t waste time and money monitoring your workforce with dehumanising statistics. Rather invest in your EVP to help win the war on talent and leapfrog the competition.
Click here to understand how you can attract and retain talent with our EVP diagnostic – Workforce 360.
