I had a consulting firm that was doing ok from 2021-2022, but ended it do to personal circumstances. At the peak of it I had 10 small business clients. About half of them were absolutely paranoid about their employees slacking off. They would just constantly be worried their employees weren't working and would try to figure out ways to monitor them.
When I stopped my business, I only kept an ongoing relationship with my biggest client. He is the worse for this. He puts cameras all over his warehouse, production facility and office. There are three office employees, and everyone of them has a camera pointed at their computer screen in the front corner of their office. He also makes it very clear to them that he has "bossware" which monitors every activity on their screen and constantly takes screenshots.
I don't get this at all. I worked as a financial professional for 10 years prior to starting my consulting company. I only had one company that had this type of software and it was really offputting. I didn't like it all. I do my thing, it makes me really uncomfortable knowing everything I'm doing on the company computer is strictly monitored in detail.
While I had my consulting firm, I had two employees. I had a private office in a co-working space, and whenever they worked a shift, I would let them in to the office and just let them do their thing. I would often not even be present. I knew I could evaluate them based on the results they provide. If I pay them for a 4 hour shift and they get done what I want to get done, I don't give a shit if they spent half the shift browsing their phone or even social media on my laptop.
Since I'm getting back in to it, I've had a meeting with a client that owns some properties and he is the exact same way. He insists on installing this bossware on his employee's computers. He pays $700 a year for it. He is a very small property manager that only does about $1mm a year in revenue. I told him it was a waste of money, but he said he needs it to make sure his employees aren't slacking.
I guess I just don't get this attitude and find it counterproductive. You either have people you can trust, thus you don't need to monitor them, or you have people you don't and they should be fired. I'm interested in hearing other entrepreneur's perspectives.
It comes down to managment style. Douglas McGregor broke it down into a framework called ‘Theory X and Theory Y.’ What you describe is an owner (or manager) who subscribes to Theory X.
https://educationlibrary.org/theory-x-and-theory-y-douglas-mcgregor/
The reality is there is most likely a Theory X or Y spectrum of employees on any team.
Based on the Pareto Principle, roughly 80% of the consequences come from 20% of the causes (the 80/20 rule). So the top 20% of your performers are going to produce 80% of your results. Unfortunately, some managers constrain the entire team (including that valuable top 20%) with micromanging to keep the bottom 80% performing at standard. This makes little sense. You would be better to ignore the bottom 80% and focus on helping the top 20% instead of holding them back.
Conversely, it stands to reason that 20% of the worst employees are creating 80% of the terrible results. What to do? We can see here is that it really makes no sense to manage the entire team as one homogeneous unit. You have to approach people as individuals and deal with their contribution, level of competence, and level of trust accordingly.
In addition, many managers have not figured out how to shift from quantifying inputs to quantifying outputs. What matters more? The amout of hours worked or the value created? The bottom line is if an employee is generating 10x sales at 1x effort, that is better than 1x sales at 10x effort. Profit and revenue should be more important than bums in seats. Process is important but the process shouldn’t encumber the business, it should free it.
Shortly explained by… Toxic work culture results in managers not firing bad employees causing the overworking of the productive ones. Fire fast, do everything you can to keep the good ones and the only thing you will do as a manager is keeping employees happy instead of managing mixed productivity with a crappy baseline.
Yep, to foster good working culture you need to fire bad one fast.