The rise of remote work has made corporate leaders paranoid, thinking they must monitor their employees’ every digital move in order to maintain productivity. But while people often zero in on Facebook, TikTok, or Netflix as potential sources of employee distraction, in truth, we’re often more distracted by the ways in which we work today. The author offers four strategies to help managers get to the root causes of what’s distracting their employees: 1) Open a dialogue about distractions; 2) Schedule-sync with your employees; 3) Don’t hold meetings without an agenda; and 4) Set an example.
It’s no secret companies spy on their staff.
A recent New York Times article stated that eight of the 10 largest American companies surveil their employees with tracking software. According to The Washington Post, global demand for employee monitoring tools increased by 65% from 2019 to 2022.
The rise of remote work has made corporate leaders paranoid, thinking they must monitor their employees’ every digital move.
Employee productivity software often measures vanity metrics, such as how many emails employees send, virtual meetings they attend, and how much time they spend typing on their computer keyboards. It doesn’t track tasks away from the computer — disregarding time spent thinking, reading or writing on paper, for example — or measure accomplishments and outcomes. Not even the leaders of productivity software approve of this use case for their apps.
“Measuring productivity based on surface-level activity like ‘messages sent’ gives us an extraordinarily limited view into a person’s contributions to their organization,” Brian Elliott, Slack senior vice president, told The Washington Post. “Not only is it arbitrary, it’s usually counterproductive.”
When employees know their performance is being measured by the rules of productivity software, they become motivated to prioritize emails and messages over their core work. This perpetuates a terrible “cycle of responsiveness,” as consultant turned professor Leslie Perlow wrote in her book Sleeping with Your Smartphone. It’s what happens when employees adjust to work “demands — adapting the techno
