Entrepreneur

Simple answer: Because they can.

Not enough people have quit to effect bottom line and new applicants keep rolling in regardless of surveillance policies. Many companies (cough cough - banking…) continue exerting as much control as legally possible as long as turnover and hiring impact doesn’t throw the business off course.

They will take as much control as the employees will allow, just like what governments have been doing for THOUSANDS of years to their people.

Have you ever heard of the concept “the world is your mirror”. It’s where everything in life reflects back your inner beliefs, doubts, anxieties etc.

The business owners you describe have trust issues. It doesn’t matter whether it’s in business or other areas of their life, their ‘poo coloured glasses’ will show them the worst in people.

Their attitude will attract the worst behaviour in people, which will then confirm their view of life. And “Ha-ha! They are right!” And people who can be trusted will leave those companies because they won’t put up with that shite.

Frankly people want to right, more than challenging their own distorted views of people and the world

Because their business sucks and they think it helps

The reason you feel this way is because you've never had to reach into your own pocket to cover a payroll.

I think it depends on the type of bussiness and “ type “ of employee . Educated employees working in a corporate environment should not need this degree of monitoring and should be measured on performance . Blue collar workers unfortunately need more management and rules and respond better to strict monitoring/procedures - in my experience and in our country this is the case

To be honest isn't it pretty standard now with tech that u can monitor and see every keystroke and everything someone does...

We should assume even the smart devices are recording everything being done

Personally i agree with you, you hire talented people to do a job, when they accomplish it, no worries. you evaluate based on quality and speed of output, not adherence to process (obviously process is important e.g. safety), the results that matter are the outputs, not the time.

this being said, i think it also depends, like some work needs to be monitored, for quality, and related - especially if its low skill menial work, where precision is still important. and example of this would be like AI image tagging which first has to be cleaned manually before its fed into the AI model for processing.

Gotta keep dem niggas in check

There are really only two ways to make profit in a business.

1. Do what you do, better (Controls/Efficiency Gains)
2. Do more of what you do (Sales Gains).

If the employee can't realistically achieve sales gains, then it makes sense to get efficiency gains from them--and that is what monitoring purports to achieve. If a company has given up on sales gains, efficiency gains are something they can target.

The transition to WFH has a huge impact on this. Everyone got used to working one way and now so much has changed and people are still adapting.

Managers used to be able to peer over cubicles on their way to get a coffee and see at a glance who is working, who is sleeping, who is chit chatting, who is watching Youtube videos, etc. Now, without them policing the workplace, they are paranoid that these behaviors are occurring unchecked during working hours and they aren't getting the best bang for their buck.

While some studies I've seen showed that over-monitoring employees leads to lower trust which actually negatively impacts employees' motivation, there is no shortage of articles written about how some people are holding down multiple jobs because they are getting by doing a fraction of what they can for each one and their management hasn't adapted their methods quickly enough to catch them.

Some jobs are easy to monitor, but some are more subjective. If you pay someone and expect them to design 3 web pages in a week, that's pretty easy to track. However, there are other jobs that can be harder to track and it becomes easier for employees to "fake it" saying they hit snags or had a string of bad luck. For example, if someone is architecting software or doing research to solve a problem, it's not easy to track their progress day-over-day as you could with some other lines of work. This leaves some managers who can't look over their shoulders like they used to scrambling to find tools and measures to fill the void.

I think the answer is poor leadership and the illusion of optimization.

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.

Yet, Europe is doing pretty well despite having regulation that allows employees to have their privacy in the workplace and doesn’t allow employers to monitor employees like that.

Can't you consult them in doing it differently?

Cruelty

I run a company… the largest productivity driver is giving employees total freedom and letting the lazy employees go, hear me out until the end. I would guess not firing enough bad employees causes employers to punish everyone with micromanaging tasks and efficiency. Because bad employees are lazy and try to do the minimum which creates a bellcurve on what you get forcing productivity monitoring.

I honestly don’t have the faintest clue what my employees are doing at any given time unless there is an issue and they need my help or input.

It sounds heartless but some people were meant to be door greeters are Walmart, they should not be working with people who are professionals in their field and keeping then deteriorates their co-workers mental health and motivation that drives what most people enjoy about work… accomplishing goals. Remove people that stand in the way of goals and get rid of people who are lazy…. You will end up with 10x more productivity than monitoring task based milliseconds because you bring you average work up by keeping smart people who have their shit together.

I would rather hire someone who can accomplish 5x as much because they are good… and have them waaaay underworked than employ someone who milks the clock because they know the maximum acceptable time before it becomes a problem. I encourage screwing off at work… i encourage things that are inherently bad for productivity. Monitoring people who are lazy forces the 5x’ers to be monitored into burn out and ruins the whole thing.

Also… most business owners are absolutely insane… they had to be to start a business :) we are all just crazy in different ways.

An owner of a private company is always gonna care more than a corporation doesn't mean it has to be crazy like you described but where as a manager may buy everyone 200 dollar office chairs because its not their money an owner mayne will shop for a decent but economical chair and this extends to all areas of the business.

I've also worked at several companies where employees were ordering expensive ink cartridges and such and reselling them on eBay.

While surveillance doesn't need to be intrusive and crazy there is a reason for it

because, at heart, people are lazy and will do an absolute minimum that can get away with. some of these lazy people have even convinced themselves that they work extremely hard.

Because the biggest threat to an organization is employees, intentional or unintentional.

A lot of entrepreneurs are bad at hiring and managing employees. Having leadership and money doesn't make anyone a good boss just because of that. Even having a degree in management doesn't guarantee you know how to handle everything like hiring, employees conflicts, although it gives you the basics on how a professional work relation should be.

Furthermore, protecting their own bad behaviors on their employees is also something recurring, which make some entrepreneurs treat their employees like they are kids, and then becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Ewww does he watch his employees take a shit too?

Chances are he already has tools he is paying for that he can monitor what employees are doing, emailing, etc.

The IT company I own helps get all that in place

Because every penny they pay you is their money and they don't want to part with it.

I'd guess these types of managers/bosses just don't get the bigger picture. They think this is what bosses are supposed to do and if workers aren't actively working, they take it personally. And/or they get greedy. They want to maximize labor to get more profit.

I don't think this works because some use downtime (on their phone, breakroom, etc.) as a reward for getting their work done. If given more work, they're no longer motivated work quickly or efficiently.