Why this tech leader thinks employee tracking software is a really bad idea

If there’s one thing bad leaders hate, it’s this: the loss of control.

The pandemic completely upended office working life, and what did they lose? Control—a too-tight grip on every employee.

Now the pandemic is in a more managed state and employees—noting record profits and productivity across industries—are rightfully unenthused about returning to lives of long commutes and limited family time. Yet certain CEOs (conveniently mostly those with the foundation of a partner, big salaries, and household support at home) loathe the idea of people continuing to work away from the office and out from under their collective thumb.

The latest evidence? The rising prevalence of tracking software. While these solutions have been around for a while, it sure seems like it’s fast becoming another way to monitor employees in their home environments, spark stressful and unnecessary intra-workplace competition, and create flawed reasoning to fire workers.

I had the opportunity to share some perspective on this recently in Forbes, but this newest facet of the digital panopticon continues to stick in my craw. Because, well, the short version is, it’s stupid and lazy. So here’s my rant on why companies using tracking software need to rethink their game.

Managers should do their jobs

There’s always a place for great technology to provide support and improve productivity—we all use it in various forms every single day, so no arguments from me on the utility of innovation.

But technology is not a replacement for what good managers do. They pull disparate groups of people together and build camaraderie, share a vision, grow trust, and—over time—create cohesive teams that achieve big goals. They get to know their team members individually and work carefully to set expectations, be supportive, understand context, and give feedback and direction. 

Related: Are they spying on you?

They take into account the nuance of uniqueness, inherent both in the person and in the job itself. For example, a content lead isn’t going to be typing 100% of the workday; thinking is a big part of writing, and it may mean they’re interviewing a subject matter expert, sketching out an idea on paper, or taking a walk to loosen up some writer’s block.

Performative productivity is not productivity

Do you really want to create a culture in which people go through the motions of being active while not accomplishing anything? Performative productivity is a time suck and an energy drain.

Your culture should be rewarding output and results, not creating an atmosphere where people are too worried about looking idle to go to the bathroom, or distracted by the thought that they might be captured on camera, or feeling so pressured that they deploy a “‘mouse jiggler,’ a device that creates the appearance of activity,” as the New York Times noted. 

Again, good managers will know what’s achievable and reasonable given an employee’s workload—and what outcomes are expected. These managers also understand that constant activity and measuring task inputs isn’t the same as smart work and great outputs.

As I said in Forbes, an hour of good thinking time, the kind that really allows you to puzzle through an issue, is 10 times better than spending 60 minutes furiously banging out emails just to look busy.

Hiring and retention is hard enough already

So despite recession fears, this is still a time when millions of jobs are going unfilled and it’s still a challenge to get exceptional talent to walk through your virtual Zoom door and commit to you. So why on earth would you embrace the reputational risk of using tracking software that makes your organization look unnecessarily harsh and punitive?

That’s especially true because many of these solutions are deeply flawed. Consider this from the Times piece: “. . . the working world’s new clocks are just wrong: inept at capturing offline activity, unreliable at assessing hard-to-quantify tasks and prone to undermining the work itself.”

So now we’re using tracking software to assess productivity and it doesn’t even work? Get out of here with this crap. If I were a talented engineer and I read some reviews on Glassdoor that even hinted at this, my answer would be swift and simple: “Next.”

Now you’re probably asking, So what could employers do instead of investing money in tracking solutions? Offer employees a bonus based on achieving a goal. Reroute this cash into meaningful training to help managers really lead—with help on goal setting and measuring. Invest in training for employees so they go deeper in their skill sets. Make sure you’re rewarding work that drives results. Give your top-performing employees retention incentives.

Or—here’s a thought—maybe use that money to recruit a better crop of leaders for your company who understand how empowered employees need to work to be both productive and successful.

I can think of literally 100 more useful places to invest your time, money, and energy. Let’s get rid of the tracking software, okay?

Amanda Richardson is the CEO of CoderPad, a leading software platform for evaluating technical talent. She has extensive experience in product management and strategy, having helped to scale multiple technology startups to hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue.