Your Firm Could Monitor Emails and Badge Swipes. Just one in 5 Workers Belief Leaders With the Knowledge
New Gallup research ties trust in data use directly to engagement and finds most employees have never had anyone explain what’s actually being collected on them.
EXPERT OPINION BY DAN SCHAWBEL, MANAGING PARTNER OF WORKPLACE INTELLIGENCE
New Gallup research finds that just 20% of employees who work on a computer or other device trust their organization’s leaders to use employee data responsibly. Another 43% trust leaders somewhat, 23% trust them not much, and 14% don’t trust them at all.
The survey covered two kinds of workplace data: activity data like hours worked, badge swipes, and email volume, and content data like the actual text of emails, meeting notes, and websites visited. Most employees believe some version of this data collection is already happening. Fifty nine percent think their employer definitely or probably collects activity data, and 46% believe it probably or definitely collects content data as well.
Trust in data use tracks almost exactly with engagement
The gap in trust between engaged and disengaged employees is enormous. Forty percent of engaged employees have a great deal of trust that leaders use their data responsibly, compared with just 13% of employees who are not engaged and only 4% of those who are actively disengaged.
Concern tends to move in the opposite direction of trust. Among employees who trust leaders a great deal, only 13% say they’re very or somewhat concerned about how their data is used. That number climbs to 30% among employees who trust leaders somewhat, 46% among those who don’t trust them much, and 65% among those who don’t trust them at all.
Refreshed leadership advice from CEO Stephanie Mehta
Employees are comfortable with some uses of data monitoring and not others, rather than rejecting it across the board. Sixty two percent are comfortable with activity data being used to help managers support team effectiveness, and 61% are comfortable with it being used for their own development. Comfort drops once the data could affect a formal outcome, with only 53% comfortable seeing it used in performance reviews and 57% comfortable seeing it factor into staffing or scheduling decisions.
Almost nobody is explaining what’s being collected
Despite how much employees believe is being tracked, direct communication about it is rare. Only 19% of all employees say someone at their organization has ever spoken with them about the data or metrics being collected on their own work.
That silence extends up the chain further than you’d expect. Managers and leaders aren’t meaningfully more likely than individual contributors to have had that conversation, with 21% of managers and 23% of leaders reporting one, compared with 19% of individual contributors. More than one in five managers and leaders don’t even have a clear view of what employee data their own organization has available to use.
Source: www.inc.com
