Major economies are in a productivity slump, with workers in the US, UK and Germany all producing less per hour and yet, they – and their employers – have access to an array of productivity tools and platforms that promise to not just measure but enhance output and performance.
Microsoft’s VIVA, for instance, offers “surveys and workplace analytics to improve workforce engagement and productivity.” Google offers Work Insights to give employers insight into Workspace usage metrics, so they can “identify success factors and problem areas.”
And Asana offers to “uncover the state of your team’s work with real-time data…[and] help you spot blockers before they become problems.”
Microsoft has claimed its tools have increased employee engagement and retention. Which sounds like a good thing.Would people stay in a job they hated?
At same time, they can also inspire unease. Unions have raised concerns about the growth of such tools. Research by Prospect shows that almost 60% of employees would be “uncomfortable” about technology that tracked their keystrokes, while 62% would be uncomfortable about software “that will determine who gets hired or promoted.”
Part of that unease might be down to concerns over what companies’ aims really are in implementing these tools. While many businesses say the goal is to support efficiency and collaboration, some high-profile cases suggest a more punitive approach.
In one notable Australian case, an employee was dismissed after keystroke-logging software revealed low activity during remote work. At US bank Wells Fargo, more than a dozen staff were terminated for using “mouse jigglers” to fake productivity.
These incidents highlight how monitoring software is increasingly used not just to track work, but to catch those trying to game the system.
Productive thinking
To understand the thinking behind these tools, we approached several of the biggest providers to explain the philosophy and science behind their productivity monitoring features.
Only Zoom responded. Helen Hawthorn, head of solution engineering EMEA, told us that Zoom’s tools are designed to “support employee performance rather than monitor or evaluate individuals.”
Zoom’s Helen Hawthorn
Those tools include AI Companion, Workforce Engagement Management, and Zoom Quality Management. Hawthorn says, “Zoom’s AI tools are built to support action and enablement, not just observation.”
Certainly, there’s more to getting the best out of employees than simply tracking mouse usage.
Daniel Gualdino, lead people scientist at Culture Amp, an employee experience platform, says “Monitoring productivity to me, sounds like a police state,” he says. “It’s not what we recommend.”
Rather, he says, “What we know is that people who are engaged are more likely to be high performing.” This starts from a belief in fostering psychological safety and then creating an infrastructure in terms of setting goals, giving feedback, etc, in which employees can thrive.
Individuals’ pride in working at a company is key, he says, as is their willingness to recommend their employer to others.
“The objective is to enable leaders and managers to create initiatives or projects designed to improve the scores, improve how people feel about communication, recognition, whatever it is, rather than saying ‘This person’s underperforming, get them out. They haven’t moved their mouse in hours.’”
Gualdino is careful to point out that “high performance” isn’t a question of seniority or length of service. Rather, each role comes – or should come – with a set of expectations.
“What determines my top performance is how I’ve gone above or below those expectations. Now, those expectations obviously need to be clear and transparent between both parties.”
Nearly 60% of employees feel uncomfortable with keystroke-tracking tech
So, it is incumbent on the organisation to define what success looks like for both parties. And, he adds, how those goals are achieved is important. “What we don’t want to the end of the day is someone, achieving all their goals, but at the same time being a pain to work with, backstabbing people, creating chaos for others.”
Are we talking about the same thing?
Ideas about productivity and performance can differ wildly across organisations, simply because different industries, companies, and departments handle such different tasks.
UK-based ActiveOps focuses on services operations in banking, insurance, and healthcare, and business process services.
Co-founder Richard Jeffery says the biggest cause of lost productivity, is not “willingness or ability” but simply “people not having the right number of things to do.” Meanwhile, he argues, “The biggest cause of stress at work is, generally, uncertainty.” And that uncertainty could simply come from not being clear what good performance looks like, or what a department’s priorities should be.
When it comes to functions such as insurance policy administration or payments processing in a bank, he says, often “the only thing that really matters is not screwing up.”
The problem is “That can be as incredibly challenging place to create motivation and to maintain it.” Often, these are “very domain specific in terms of what ‘good’ looks like.” Which means local measures, different objectives, which can be a challenge for leaders when it comes to comparability or impartiality in decision making across functions.
So, for ActiveOps the challenge is to help companies produce systems, feedback loops, and forecasts, to help organisations say “This is what we can do. This is what good looks like.”
What’s clear is that for companies to use any tool that claims to measure performance or engagement, is they must first understand the nuances of their own business across domains and teams – or at least be open to start understanding them.
Tools such as Viva might give very granular data on employees. But without context that data’s utility might be questionable.
Ultimately, Jeffery says, simply measuring something doesn’t mean you’re managing it. The key thing is “What does that data do. How are you going to use it.”
The alternative, he says, is “chaotic, with an infinite dashboard of data.” With no one agreeing what it means.
In Part Two of this feature we explore the legal and ethical implications of workplace monitoring, and ask where the line really lies between management and surveillance
