The Work-From-Home Trust Crisis

With the rise of remote work, many companies are implementing technology to track how much work their work-from-home employees are doing.

But tracking your employee’s keystrokes and mouse movements and recording their screen is more like surveillance than an accurate measure of productivity.

This sudden rise in surveillance begs the question:

Why are we treating work-from-home employees differently than those in the office?

This level of surveillance is not typical in an office setting.

Are the keystrokes and mouse movements of employees tracked while they are in the office? Is there a camera pointed at each cubicle? Are employee's lunch breaks tracked to the minute? How often is management stopping by employee's desk to ensure they are working?

We assume our employees are working simply because they are physically at work.

And here is the irony. One of the key arguments is that the office is a social setting to create culture and camaraderie, yet this creates distractions that make it more challenging to be productive.?

Overwhelming research shows remote work model is more productive.

There are countless surveys, like the one conducted by Stanford University in the summer of 2020, that showed remote workers were 5% more productive than in-office workers.??

By the spring of 2022, the study showed remote workers were 9% more productive than in-office workers since they learned to do remote work more effectively and invested in better technology.?

Yet despite all the evidence that remote employees are more productive, employers feel the need to? monitor only work-from-home employees with surveillance technology.

Monitoring is not the answer.

When you buy a toaster, you don’t purchase it based on how many hours it took to make it — you buy it based on the quality of the toaster. So instead of tracking exactly how long it took your employees to complete a task, measure the quality of that task.

Tracking employees’ activity on their computers will only leave them disgruntled and undermine trust, a critical factor in organizational success that, once lost, is incredibly difficult to regain.??

The root of the work-from-home trust crisis is that the traditional top-down organizational structures are not as effective for virtual teams.?

According to research in the Journal of International Management, when collaborators are separated by geography, typical approaches to leadership are not as effective.?

Instead, “shared leadership,” which involves dividing up leader responsibilities across multiple people, was more helpful for virtual teams.

The need for monitoring drops off dramatically when the ownership of the outcome is placed on the responsibility of the individual.

About the Author

Richard Bliss is the founder and president of BlissPoint, a social media consulting company that helps improve executives’ online communications and sales teams’ social selling behaviors. A LinkedIn Top Voices Influencer, experienced executive communications manager, and social media coach, Richard has helped thousands of people master social media tools and become fluent in social conversations, building their platforms and confidence to reach their audience and define their brand effectively.