Managing employee performance during COVID-19 and beyond: It's literally about time
The nature of 'work' as a concept is experiencing dramatic changes in the COVID-19 era, with many of its conceptual boundaries changing or being removed altogether at a staggering pace. The question of how to measure employee performance of 'remote' workers has become a burning issue in the management world, with answers ranging from full employee monitoring policies to almost completely open, laissez-faire relationships between companies and employees.
The bottom line? Most companies should stop monitoring their employees' punch-in/punch-out clocks and instead focus on the quality of work being produced in the time it took to do it. Read more to find out why...
During and after the First Industrial Revolution, the nature of work became more and more compartmentalized, specialized, and skills-based. This required a new, performance-based focus on managing workers that led to the rise of a new managerial class, as an organizational Agent, and to a huge array of opinions and research about how to effectively and efficiently manage workers for optimal levels of performance.
Since then, management theories about employee performance were, as now, very much a product of their times. For example, in the late 19th- and early 20th-centuries when the focus of work was still very much manufacturing-based, theories tended to focus on the design of work to bring forth high levels of performance from low-skilled workers. This time famously saw the rise of scientific management principles, or 'Taylorism', which associated high levels of performance with time-based accomplishments on the job, rewarded by increasing amount of money for pieces produced, known as 'piece-rate' rewards.
In part as a result of the popularity of Taylorism with owner-manager types, management practices in the mid-20th century were heavily influenced by the economic considerations of owning and operating a business. From economics, a new and pervasive way of thinking about management arose to become what is now known as Agency Theory. In a nutshell, this theory was concerned with two main problems, the agency problem and the risk problem.
The agency problem was represented when there was a conflict of goals between firm managers, or 'agents', and their workers. The problem of differing risk was represented by the assessment of risks undertaken by agents and workers in the ongoing success of the firm. In both cases, workers were seen to be motivated only by base needs and, when not being watched, they would shirk their duties by stealing, causing property damage, being absent, and performing at stubbornly slow rates, among other bad things. Only agents, and the owners of the firm known as 'principals', were seen to be acting in the best interests of the firm at all times, even when not being monitored.
The key for getting high levels of performance from workers was simple: as the firm's agent, one had to monitor workers' performance all of the time on the principals' behalf, or overall firm performance would start to drop due to employee shirking. Workers themselves were seen as inherent risks, and could not be relied upon to act in the honest interest of the firm unless they were being routinely monitored for performance. This led to the development of a range of employee monitoring techniques, including the physical design of workspaces. One of these designs, known as the Panopticon, was a large circular space where agents could monitor employees at all times from a large tower in the centre of the room.
The response from employees to these changes were, by and large, negative. The use of monitoring and time-and-motion techniques were seen to be an invasive way for agents to get workers to do 'more for less'. Early research in the early- to mid-20th century showed that people disliked being monitored all of the time and that their performance was probably suffering as a result. The famous Hawthorne Studies showed us that, among other things, people act differently when they know they are being watched compared to when they are not, and that simple praise and encouragement could be as effective a motivator as money, if not more-so.
"The bottom line? Companies should stop monitoring their employees' punch-in/punch-out clocks and instead focus on the quality of work being produced in the time it took to do it."
Fast-forward almost a century to 2021, when now, in the midst of a global pandemic where thousands of office employees are working from home, we find ourselves in the midst of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, where human effort and technology are fusing together to provide ever-growing levels of productivity and innovation. From research, we now know that workers are certainly motivated by money, but also many things other than money, such as prestige, power, and praise, to name a few. People get attached to their organizations through exchanges with them that are both economic and social in nature. Over time, they gather the outcomes of all these exchanges into a perceived relationship with their organization, taking into account the 'good with the bad', with a whole lot of positive and negative outcomes in tow. Think of these outcomes as 'side bets' that employees would lose if they left their organizations. For example, some people stay at their jobs to hang onto their pensions, which is an example of an economic side bet. Others may stay at work for the social networking and friendship experiences, which are examples of a social side bet.
It may be worthwhile to use the agency lens for some jobs, such as those with set task performance standards, as in the fast-food industry, where speed of production is part of the job. To some extent it may even be applicable to some knowledge-industry jobs like writing, for example, where deadlines are a constant reality. But most work these days, at least in terms of the the working from home situation during COVID-19 days, is complex and knowledge based. It is very difficult to examine and rate competencies and many behaviours under a time and motion lens.
"It is very difficult to examine and rate competencies and many behaviours under a time and motion lens."
I was alarmed by a recent op-ed piece in the Financial Post, which issued the scathing opinion that many remote workers are engaging in 'time theft' when it comes to performing their jobs during the COVID-19 pandemic. The author, who offers no concrete evidence of these sorts of behaviours, takes the exact same position as Agency theorists - that is, if employees are not being monitored they will engage in theft and other counter-productive behaviours that will ultimately destroy the company unless action is taken. In fact, there is little evidence that employee productivity is going down or that time theft is going up in the COVID-19 era.
However, there is some truth to the agency argument - research shows that if you treat people as untrustworthy, then they will act accordingly. But the flip-side is also true - treating people with respect and dignity is associated with positive employee behaviours that go above and beyond basic task performance. These behaviours, known as organization citizenship behaviours, can aggregate to firm-level performance in positive ways. Managers, ask yourself - if performance is high and morale is good, why mess with it, as long as the works gets done? Does it matter if the work is done in the morning over coffee or late at night with the TV on?
As managers, we need to move beyond the 'bricks and mortar' aspect of work to help find ways to support our employees' performance in the COVID-19 and post-COVID-19 worlds. We should use the appropriate evidence to support our claims about employee and firm-level performance. And most importantly, we need to remember that those are human beings inhabiting those little digital boxes in our Zoom, MS Teams, and Skype displays, not mechanical tools that need to be continuously monitored for time theft.
Dr. Jeffrey J. McNally, or 'Dr. Jeff' as he is known to his students, is a professor of management at the University of New Brunswick, Canada. His award-winning research focuses primarily on studying the outcomes of entrepreneurship education. Jeff also studies the outcomes of workplace attitudes. More information about him can be found online on LinkedIn, Twitter, or you can send him an email at [email protected].