I spy with my camera eye

When employers play big brother, they may not like the results

Body cameras. Closed-circuit televisions. Traceable ID cards. If you want to keep an eye on your employees, there are plenty of ways to go about it—but the effort may not be worth the risk, says Michel Anteby, a Questrom associate professor of organizational behavior. In a 2018 Harvard Business Review article, “Why Monitoring Your Employees’ Behavior Can Backfire,” he challenges the assumption that spying on employees’ actions incentivizes their good behavior.

Case study: In 2009 alone, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) received more than 7,000 complaints from passengers about their property mysteriously vanishing during screenings. TSA responded by installing closed-circuit television cameras at airport checkpoints nationwide to thwart theft and mitigate passengers’ concerns. In interviews with 89 employees and their managers, however, Anteby found that the surveillance had unintended consequences.

The TSA employees reported that the more their managers scrutinized their work, the less they felt valued as individuals; they were only recognized for their mistakes. As one officer said, it seemed the managers were “looking for excuses to slap you on the hand.”

When employees feel like they’re being watched, Anteby found, they tend to engage in “invisibility practices,” like hiding from the cameras, taking walks, and lingering in restrooms. Their efforts to avoid notice from their managers often backfire, triggering suspicion and only leading to additional surveillance—a destructive pattern Anteby calls the “cycle of coercive surveillance.”

But, Anteby writes, “If managers can recognize up front the unintended consequences of increased surveillance, they might help derail these dynamics.”