The Boss Is Watching: The Effects of Monitoring Employees

No one likes the boss constantly looking over their shoulder as they work. But what are the effects of constantly being scrutinized to see if you are actually doing your job? This monitoring of employee behavior became an even bigger issue during the pandemic, when many employees were forced to work from home. Remote work made it much more difficult for bosses to know if their workers were actually working. As a result, supervisors had to improvise strategies to know how much their employees were working.

A recent study looked at the effects of supervisor monitoring of employees while they worked remotely, both during, and after, the pandemic. In “Is Someone Looking Over My Shoulder?” Janey Zheng and colleagues (Zheng, et al., 2023) followed a wide range of different employees over time, asking them daily how much they perceived that their supervisor was monitoring their online performance (i.e., “Today, my manager kept pretty close tabs on me,” or “Today, I felt like my manager was looking over my shoulder”). They were also asked to report how much they felt they were trusted, as well as how energized and exhausted they felt at the end of the workday.

In both the study of remote workers conducted during the pandemic, and the second study of remote workers after the emergency phase of the pandemic, the results were the same. Workers who perceived that their boss was “looking over their shoulder”—high levels of monitoring—felt less trust from their supervisor, and that led to reduced vigor/energy and a greater sense of emotional exhaustion. Importantly, the effect of monitoring/surveillance on employee health and well-being was mediated by the employees’ perceptions of how much they felt their supervisors trusted them.

What Are the Implications of This Research?

Obviously, supervisors need to monitor, at some level, their employees’ performance. However, the results of this study suggest that “over-monitoring” can lead to a sense that employees are not trusted, and the result can be increased stress and lack of energy and motivation.

Supervisors should consider:

• How often they check in with employees in order to make sure that they are not “over-monitoring" workers.
• Moving from ongoing surveillance/monitoring to creating a schedule of “deliverables” from subordinates.
• Opportunities to delegate tasks and responsibilities to show trust in supervisees.
• Allowing some autonomy to employees in terms of how and when they perform certain tasks.
• Providing clear feedback about expected work practices, modes of communication, and performance expectations.