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.
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.
I can tell you by doing this, you will create a culture of fear and your company will be awful. The top performer will be demotivated and won’t want to work here. The management of bad performers can be done very differently.
I reread my comment and agree with you. I missed a very important detail and revised my comment.
I have 100% employee retention after people make it past their 90 day probationary period. This is for a 10 year old business. I have never once had anyone fear for their job and my employees love their jobs…. I make sure they know how appreciated they are and i leave them alone… i buy lunches, snacks and unless we have an issue that affects the business i just make sure the systems we have in place enable them to spend as much time as possible on the meaningful parts of their jobs.
They are all salary and none work over 40 hours a week. They have unlimited time off (they organize this per department to make sure we do ‘t have to many people out which has never been an issue). Anywho, i revised my original comment which reads much differently now :)
It shows how batshit crazy most managers are that you think the first sentence needs explained.
When I joined my current company, my manager was like that. It was fantastic. I spent all my time doing my job, or trying to improve my job.
Then the bastard got promoted. Now I’m being micromanaged by the new manager, and my initiative is completely dead. Any ideas I come up with are shot down. Anything I start working on is blocked as I’m yanked from one issue to the next. They’re not even emergencies.