Canadian HR Reporter

CanaDian hr reporTer november 3, 2014 10 news the Harvard Business Review. When people are being watched, they change their behav- iour — often in ways that are coun- terproductive at work, he said. "(In the science of manage- ment), we've assumed that people to some extent are like machines. If we could just understand more about what they're doing — if we could observe them more clear- ly — then we could do more to (learn), we could do more to avoid mistakes... We forget that, unlike machines, human beings change their behaviour when they're watched," he said. "When we're thinking about looking in from the outside of or- ganizations, we talk about trans- parency and we want as much of it as possible. But when we're talk- ing about being observed, we use the word 'privacy.' And I think that sort of reflects our natural desire to have a certain degree of unob- served activity in our work lives, as well as our personal lives." Employers generally under- stand that behaviour changes when it's observed — that's why certain tools, such as surveillance or Internet monitoring, are used. But it's not just negative behav- iours (like slacking off ) that can be altered when employees are put under the microscope. Posi- tive behaviours, such as creativity and innovation, can be stifled as well, said Bernstein. "ere are lots of ways in our daily work lives where we actually want to try something, experi- ment with it, muddle a bit, tinker before we actually have people see it," he said. "at creative or tin- kering process requires (the sense that) 'It's just me right now.'" Open space One way many organizations have tried to introduce more transpar- ency is by opening up the work- space itself, using open office plans, said Bernstein. But there has to be a balanc- ing act between the shared and private space, said Matthew Da- vis, lecturer at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom and an expert on the impacts of open offices. Quicker communication, in- novation and lower costs are tempered by potential negative impacts on productivity when employees feel they don't have any quiet or private space, he said. "When people are doing par- ticularly demanding work, that can impact on their performance," he said, citing interruptions such as noise, conversations and visual distractions. ere's also the concern that professional and interpersonal relationships can be hampered when people feel their conversa- tions and interactions are "on dis- play," he said. "You see some mixed evidence in terms of friendship and stron- ger ties. So in some circumstanc- es… you don't have the same level of privacy, so it's hard to really get to know people if you're always (concerned) you'll be overheard," he said, adding that it can create some degree of self-censorship. "It's so much more public... Also, sometimes we see a little bit less in terms of feedback from managers because, again, you don't have that confidentiality there." You can't have an open plan without some private space built in as well, said Steve Cascone, vice-president and design princi- pal at Mayhew in Toronto. "If you don't have those spaces, the overall space won't work. It won't be effective," he said. "When I'm sitting out in an open plan space, what I'm doing quite often is things that don't require a lot of concentration, so responding to emails, maybe having phone calls that are not considered confiden- tial… collaborating. "(But) when I do need to have that sort of heads-down, concen- trated work, I truly can't do it in that space. So I have to have other spaces I can go to." Open data Another avenue for workplace transparency is around data — monitoring employees' email, Internet browsing, even their movements during the day, said Bernstein. As technology continues to advance, there are endless and increasingly complex methods of monitoring employees, said An- drew Stevens, assistant professor in the faculty of business adminis- tration at the University of Regina. "As workplaces become more technologically enabled, the types of technology used to surveil and monitor become more embedded in (our) day-to-day lives," he said. "So, for instance, we could see the standard CCTV camera that would look at work stations, bank tellers, in and around buildings for the safety of employees and the general public; we have seen a very rapid growth in the devel- opment of radio frequency ID to track the location of trucks and even employees who have these pieces of equipment embedded in their clothing around warehouses, for instance. Monitoring has really developed with computerization." e best way to capture this technology is to understand it as ubiquitous, meaning it is every- where in our daily lives and ev- erywhere in the workplace, said Stevens. But near-constant moni- toring can have a complex impact on employees. "How it affects the employees is going to depend on the type of work that they're doing, the type of atmosphere in which they're working, the nature of employ- ment relations or labour relations. We know that, depending on the workplace, it can lead to some certain psychological stresses and impairments. It can lead to increased anxiety, it can lead to subsequently mental and physi- cal health issues, but that's going to depend on the purpose and the nature of the relationship that al- ready exists." Some employees might re- spond by changing their patterns of behaviour, but others may ac- tively resist. "It's not so much that they're trying to spite employers but rather they're trying to make their lives bearable. So there's a (senti- ment) in some workplaces that surveillance is quite malicious and it's overbearing, and they try to circumvent it in ways that make the workplace more human… just to carve out their own space in the workplace, outside of manage- ment's gaze," he said. Creating a balance So how can employers create the right balance between transpar- ency and privacy? In general, it's about creating effective "zones" of privacy, said Bernstein. One way to do that is by thinking carefully about how teams are designed and how many people we need to be "performing" for at a given time, he said. "Distraction can take over when you have too many people in sight. And that's not just distraction but also this desire to perform as peo- ple expect, so you don't draw addi- tional attention and distract them from what they're doing — as op- posed to when you have a small enough group and you actually feel comfortable that if someone sees you doing things differently, you can explain what you're doing and sort of have that conversation that might be actually valuable for productivity," said Bernstein. A second kind of privacy is creating a boundary between feedback and evaluation — so developmental feedback should not necessarily factor into how employees are evaluated. "at way, people feel like they can be open in conversations that are helping them improve them- selves," he said. "at is actually getting harder to do. e more open work en- vironments are — be that lines of sight or be that data that sort of follows us everywhere — it's actually getting more and more common that our perceptions of peoples' performance is based on everything that we see and, there- fore, everything that they do, be- cause we see everything." ere should also be bound- aries between "improvement rights" and "decision rights," so if you're trying to improve on your own work processes, you should have the right to do so without necessarily having to go to some decision-maker to get permission. The idea is not to minimize transparency, said Bernstein. 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