The timeless workplace dynamics of employers accusing staff of procrastination and employees griping about micromanaging bosses have taken on a new intensity with the shift to remote work during the pandemic.
While many have returned to working in the office after the pandemic-induced restrictions were lifted, some continue to work remotely or have adopted a hybrid approach of working in the office and from home several days a week.
Employers concerned about lower productivity in this post-pandemic era are trying to navigate the “productivity paranoia” and pinpoint where the boundaries have blurred, especially in offices that practise remote and hybrid work.
Companies like JPMorgan and Barclays are increasingly adopting surveillance measures — to the point where they spy on their employees’ emails, track their current location via company-issued devices and check their browsing history and download activities — under the guise of workplace cyber safety and confidentiality.
While some employers may have intended to maintain productivity, recent evidence shows that these surveillance tactics are ineffective and detrimental to employee morale. So, how can employers establish clear boundaries to ensure employee productivity while respecting their staff’s privacy?
Cybozu CEO Yoshihisa Aono points out that the primary concern with workplace surveillance is the potential deterioration of trust between managers and their employees. He emphasises the necessity of minimising employee surveillance. Cybozu is a worldwide provider of collaborative office software solutions for teams.
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He adds: “At Cybozu, the corporate culture rests on the assumption that employees know best how to do their jobs, so we ensure to keep the monitoring [of employees] at a minimum. Instead, we emphasise independence and autonomy, focusing primarily on results.”
A certain amount of overview is necessary for evaluation and basic coordination and managers must understand the roles and tasks of their team members. The key to understanding is not surveillance but proactive communication.
“When a company has a teamwork culture that prioritises the open exchange of information, everyone can easily get an idea of what everyone else is doing. That means managers have a better understanding of employees and employees have a better understanding of each other. In an open communication culture, workplace surveillance is unnecessary,” says Aono.
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Managing without monitoring
While stress and paranoia are not easy emotions to manage in a work environment, employees may face them occasionally. Extreme surveillance and performance tracking may worsen the situation.
Aono firmly believes that surveillance is not optimal for a manager’s time. Instead, managers should implement effective employee management without the use of surveillance.
“The first step is alignment, which starts with hiring. Rather than hiring based on general feeling or ability to do the job, it is important to ensure future employees resonate with the overall culture and mission of the organisation. Employees need to see themselves as an indispensable part of the overall success of a company,” he says.
“Next, employees must be given the independence and autonomy to do their best work. This means three things: Employers practising corporate policies that allow flexibility, like hybrid work, flextime and comprehensive leave policies; adopting a corporate culture where those policies can be effected for positive work-life balance; and having workplace tools that allow independence and autonomy.”
According to Aono, managers should only come in when one of these factors is out of alignment. He adds that unnecessary hierarchies will develop over time when employees rely on email and chat messages to obtain information. “At Cybozu, we use our no-code platform, Kintone, which is built on the idea of an open exchange of information. Employees can access all the data and communication history they need to do their best work without asking others for access.”
For example, Cybozu subsidiary Kintone helps employers create a digital collaborative workspace in the cloud. This user-friendly tool offers automated workflows without the need for coding skills.
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Self-reporting as a solution
Rather than surveillance by management, self-surveillance or self-reporting can create a positive outcome in terms of work productivity, improved performance and, most importantly, happy employees.
“At Cybozu, our employees fix their work schedules and decide whether to work from home or in the office. Then, they are expected to inform their teams of their work preferences via our online platform, accessible by everyone,” says Aono.
Self-reporting also enables employees to coordinate more efficiently among themselves without relying on management intervention. By reviewing a colleague’s messages or workload, one can quickly gauge if they need assistance, are encountering challenges, or are lacking essential information.
However, self-reporting must be fundamental to a company’s work culture. Once established, it proves significantly more effective than surveillance. Aono continues: “When it comes to data, results-based evaluation can help put together high-performing teams to solve complex problems within a company. I think output-driven data is more useful than detailed information about how individual employees spend their work hours.”
This article first appeared in The Edge Malaysia
