There's no question that the COVID-19 pandemic changed how we view remote work. Remote work is becoming commonplace (see my recent post on some of the remote work trends in "The evolution of working from home"), with recent studies suggesting that one in five Americans will work from home by 2025. The majority of workers prefer to work remotely - another recent survey found that 54% of people want to work fully remotely, 41% want to work a hybrid schedule, and only 5% of employees want to work in the office full-time. In this same survey, nearly two-thirds of workers say that the ability to work remote is the most important aspect of a job, ranking above even salary, benefits, and a flexible schedule. And, as some technology companies have started to require workers to come back to the office, 14% of workers stated that they would refuse to come back on-site, even if their employers required it!
There are clear benefits to remote work. For example, a survey conducted by Forbes magazine, 71% of workers said that working remotely helped them to better balance their work and personal lives. However, there are also drawbacks to remote work. In the same survey, 53% of remote workers reported that it was harder to feel connected to their organization and fellow co-workers. Nearly 70% of remote workers stated that digital communication tools increased burnout.
As I've discussed in previous posts (see "Everyone's working for the weekend?", "The WFH Question" and "Remote work, again..."), there have been a number of studies that have tried to determine whether remote working improves or worsens productivity. With this concern in mind, several organizations have implemented electronic monitoring tools in order to keep closer tabs on what their employees are doing when they are working from home (the Forbes survey found that almost 40% of remote workers reported being monitored by their organizations).
As employers embrace electronic monitoring of their remote employees, it's logical to ask how workers perceive and respond to being monitored in this manner. For example, one concern is that workers may perceive that "Big Brother is watching" and respond negatively, actually worsening productivity in the long run. It is with this important question in mind that led to the study by a team of investigators who published their findings in the Journal of Organizational Behavior ("Trouble with big brother" Counterproductive consequences of electronic monitoring through the erosion of leader-member social exchange"). They conducted both a laboratory study and a field study, basing their investigation on a framework known as social exchange theory. Here, employees will expect that the relationship with their supervisor is mutually beneficial. Supervisors help their employees grow and develop as individuals, they trust them to do the right thing, and they provide them some flexibility and choice in how their work is completed. In turn, the employees "reward" their supervisors' behavior with increased engagement and productivity. Conversely, if supervisors do not help their employees grow and develop or don't provide them with some degree of flexibility, choice, and trust, then the employees will respond negatively and won't work as hard (i.e. productivity suffers). They therefore hypothesized that electronic monitoring would actually worsen employee engagement and motivation, undermine the relationship between the employee and their direct supervisor, and lead to deviant behavior, such as loafing. Together, all of these factors would decrease productivity and performance.
While the results between the laboratory-based study and the field study were slightly different, the overall results suggested that (1) electronic monitoring of employees working remotely actually leads to worse productivity and (2) these effects can be mitigated if supervisors use the electronic monitoring as a tool to help grow and develop their employees. The first result shouldn't be too surprising - I have posted about Ethan Bernstein's studies in the past (see my post "The Search for Meaning") on the so-called "transparency paradox" (see also Bernstein's Harvard Business Review article "The Transparency Trap"). Consistent with the findings in the present study, Bernstein found that that the greater transparency in open work environments actually decreases worker productivity.
What the current study adds to the literature is the second finding. If the supervisors used the electronic monitoring as a discussion point and tool for professional growth and development with the individual employee, productivity did not suffer at all. In other words, if the employee interpreted the electronic monitoring as "Big Brother is watching", they were more likely to slack off or intentionally work slowly and waste time. If the employees felt that the supervisor was using the electronic monitoring tool to help them become more efficient, they continued to work productively.
There will inevitably be additional studies on remote work and electronic monitoring in the years to come. I suspect that remote work/hybrid work arrangements are here to stay. As leaders and managers, we need to figure out how best to incorporate these alternative working arrangements to help our teams reach their full potential and help our organizations to succeed.
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