My son is a high school senior. His school has a tradition called the Senior Corner — a spot in the Upper School commons, television included, that seniors earn as a rite of passage.
Not anymore.
The TV is gone this year, and the explanation is that last year’s seniors were too loud and disturbed nearby classrooms.
Last year’s seniors. Not this year’s. The kids who caused the problem graduated. The kids paying for it did nothing wrong.
That’s not discipline. That’s an institution that didn’t want to do the harder work of identifying who was actually being disruptive, so it punished everyone instead.
Sound familiar?
It’s the same move John Morgan, of the law firm Morgan & Morgan, bragged about on video — describing how he monitors remote employees by, in his words, “putting cameras up employees’ backsides.”
Watch everyone. Make sure nobody’s slacking.
That’s not oversight. It’s an admission that he doesn’t know which employees are the problem, so he’s decided to treat all of them as suspects.
Blanket discipline or surveillance is the corporate version of taking away the TV. It’s what a manager reaches for when identifying and addressing the two or three underperforming employees feels like more work than monitoring everyone.
It’s not a performance-management strategy. It’s an avoidance strategy masquerading as one.
And it backfires in the workplace for the same reason it backfires in a school commons.
Your best employees notice.
They notice that their discipline, output, and integrity bought them nothing. That they’re being treated exactly like the person who actually earned the scrutiny.
Once people figure that out, you’ve traded a performance problem for a morale problem. And morale problems are much harder to solve. Once you’ve killed morale, it’s incredibly difficult to win it back.
If you’ve got employees who aren’t working while remote, that’s a real issue. Address it with them. Directly. Personally. Document it, manage it, and if it doesn’t improve, part ways with them.
What you don’t do is turn your entire workforce into a surveillance target because two people gave you a headache.
That’s not management. That’s giving every employee a reason to wonder why they bothered being good at their job in the first place.
Punish the offender. Not the workplace.
Here’s what I read this week that you should read, too.
HR Needs an AI Workforce Strategy Before the Layoffs — via EntertainHR
The AI and Communications Blueprint: 4 Things Every Comms Leader Needs to Get Right — via Ragan.com
Why Every Employer Now Needs an AI Policy (Even If You Think You Don’t Use AI) — via Employment & Human Rights Law In Canada
How Do I Handle an Anonymous Complaint? — via Improve Your HR by Suzanne Lucas, the Evil HR Lady
My coworker exposed our boss’s affair with secret videos — via Ask a Manager
Wheel Of Fortune Announcer Suspended After Alleged Incident; Role Will Be Recast During Investigation — via TVLine
Alanis Morissette Accuses Ex-Tour Manager of Extortion Scheme in Lawsuit — via Consequence
Biglaw Firm’s Emails Casually Insult ‘Dumb Judge’ And ‘Poop Man’ — via Above the Law
A False Cancer Diagnosis Could Not Cure the Employer’s Very Real ADA Problem — via Eric Meyer’s Employer Handbook Blog
You Need to Understand Your Employees’ Caregiving Responsibilities — via Harvard Business Review
