"What you measure is what you get. More likely, what you measure is ALL you'll get." Wells Fargo might want to (finally) listen to Accounting historian H. Thomas Johnson, who decades ago summed up the results of measuring activity vs outcomes. Thanks to Emily Peck for talking with me about her coverage of how the mouse jigglers debacle at Wells Fargo is symptomatic of #productivity theater. "Remote surveillance is just the latest version of a boss looking out at the office floor to check that there are 'butts in seats.'" Management through monitoring is the weakest form of management -- in fact, it's counterproductive. Not only do people behave to that system, but you destroy #trust and drive down #engagement. You'd think companies like Wells in particular would have learned this by now: this isn't their first issue of "ethics" scandals driven by activity-based incentive systems. The answer is simple but requires hard work: put in place systems that align people against an organization's overall purpose and goals, ladder those goals up and down the org, and measure performance based on outcomes. Not keystrokes, badge swipes or butts in seats. #Productivity #monitoring #engagement #remotework #hybrid #technology #FutureOfWork
I agree that many organizations have failed to establish SMART metrics to measure employees by and while the evidence has always been there, I don't think they really looked at the metrics until they were asked to evaluate remote efficiencies. This also brings up the question of what established productivity pre-remote metrics are they actually measuring too? Most of the results are being presented use terms like we believe or think, verses hard metrics like previously were at 80% and now we are at 60% or 90% for example. As prospective employees we are told how important it is to provide metrics on our resumes to help organizations understand our value, but are they following their own desired standards with regards to their own metrics for evaluations?
Totally agree Brian. While a lot of this tracking is on purpose, employers have to be on guard that it isn't happening unintentionally. Recent example, we discovered that new "location tracking" data was going to be available to the managers of one of our clients as part of the reporting from their new ERP system. It looks like it was a standard feature of the system they hadn't asked for and didn't know about until a leader I was interviewing who was involved in the roll out mentioned it. I asked the leader I work most directly with if they knew about it. They knew nothing and they were alarmed because if managers started to use it incorrectly that would totally undermine the "lead with what, not where" messaging of their flexible work strategy.
Track output, not input: https://continuouscoordination.org/output-not-input/
Great points Brian Elliott!! I was just chatting with someone last week about how counter productive this type of thing was to overall employee engagement. That aside, I'm a firm believer in measuring results over inputs. Otherwise you often get behaviors that are totally unaligned with your end goals. Plus which, it seems pretty backwards to track a 100k+ employee's keystrokes and mouse-moves. You trusted them enough to execute on their objectives when you offered them the job right? If not, then I'd say it's time to look at the overall hiring process.
It starts at the very top. If you understand your organisations strategic goals then it should be fairly simple to cascade meaningful objectives to each function and set targets accordingly. If these are missing then the ‘wastes’ will stack up and the culture will turn sour leading to ‘wandering’ employees and frustrated managers.
Yep, incentives matter. Like when you have high-stakes incentives for bank tellers to open fake accounts without the customer's knowledge or permission.
"The purpose of a system is what it does." - Stafford Beer. If you have mouse-jiggling, that is what your system is designed to do. Look upstream, not downstream.
Well said, Brian Elliott and great piece Emily Peck. I love when a light gets shined brightly on the faux-productivity metrics and behaviors which are still ubiquitous across companies. We're long past due for a refreshed approach that aligns to the way people should be working, not to the way they're "enabled" to work through technology.
I knew someone who would show up to their office and watch hours of Netflix downloaded on their phone while sitting at their desk. Got their work done, but had nothing else to do after but waste time sitting in an office because that was the metric. Period the end.
Advisor, speaker & best-selling author | startup CEO, Google, Slack | Forbes' Future of Work 50
3wPlease read Emily Peck's excellent coverage: https://www.axios.com/2024/06/18/wells-fargo-mouse-jiggler-fired-employee-productivity