‘Fear of the rare bad apple’ can damage employee trust and morale

Last month, Wells Fargo fired more than a dozen employees for “simulation of keyboard activity creating impression of active work,” Bloomberg reported.

“Wells Fargo holds employees to the highest standards and does not tolerate unethical behavior,” a company spokesperson told Bloomberg in a statement.

While it’s unclear how the fired employees were faking active work, mouse jigglers and other devices that simulate computer activity surged in popularity post-pandemic, as companies increasingly sought to monitor remote workers’ productivity.

Wells Fargo did not respond to HR Brew’s request for comment by publication.

“There’s this argument that becomes, ‘Well, these kinds of monitoring systems worked, and they caught these folks’...but did they? And at what cost?” Joe Mull, keynote speaker and author of Employalty: How to Ignite Commitment and Keep Top Talent in the New Age of Work, told us.

Mull, along with Deborah Grayson Riegel, a communication and leadership expert, who’s taught at Wharton and Columbia Business Schools, shared with HR Brew what monitoring employees may say about a company’s culture.

Monitoring can erode trust. There are generally two types of employee monitoring systems, Mull told us: accountability systems that oversee time spent working, and productivity systems that help employees work more effectively.

When companies use software that counts keystrokes or monitors attendance, Mull said it can damage employee trust and morale. Leaders who use these tools are sometimes “driven by fear of the rare bad apple,” when their workforce largely wants to do good work, he added.

Companies that treat employees as trustworthy and reliable “without needing to be coaxed or pressured,” he said, have more loyal, committed employees.

Results-oriented workplace. Mull said employees are less likely to “game the system” if goals and outcomes are clearly aligned and communicated. Grayson Riegel agreed, noting that employers should define “good work.”

“Is good work that you fill up the amount of time allotted, or is it that you get the work done in the time it takes?” Grayson Riegel said. “If I’ve met my goals, have accomplished my results, does it matter whether I did it at 3 am or 3 pm?”

Monitoring systems, she said, “can be a signal of low trust of your workers. It can be a signal that managers are being evaluated on how much time their workers spend online versus how much progress their employees are making toward the goal.”

Employers, she suggested, should consider “Less ‘We’re tracking your keystrokes,’ and more ‘We’re tracking your results.’”