Measure what matters

Several weeks ago, I spoke to a friend who lives back home in New Jersey. He vented a bit of frustration at his employer, a law firm in Manhattan; it seems that one of my friend's colleagues had been terminated - because he'd been late to work one time too many. On the surface of it, that doesn't sound so unreasonable; but that's only part of the story.

You see, this particular employee - we'll call him Joe - worked in the IT department. For the last six months of his two-year tenure, Joe was performing both network connectivity and database administration (functions that, in most organizations, are performed by two different people). In addition, Joe lived in Queens and drove into Manhattan every day - a commute that is notorious for its insanity. Finally, Joe regularly worked from home well into the evenings.

Let's recap: you have a single employee who is doing the job of two; he willingly works on his own time to ensure that business flows smoothly. He's a terrific employee, but he has a problem getting into the office on time. So what's more important: facetime? or effectiveness, productivity, and passion for the job?

This law firm made a bad call here, if you ask me. Sure, there are industries and businesses where facetime and punctuality are critical. My sister is the Director of an ICU, and nursing is a profession where punctuality is absolutely necessary: nurses give report to the next shift during shift changes, and so being late can mean the difference between knowing what's going on and operating blind. But for many of us, in many businesses, facetime is something we use as a means to control our employees for no good reason other than the fact that we can.

This is a stupid way to operate, folks. Facetime is not an effective measurement of an employee's value - particularly if the employee is salaried rather than hourly and has a notebook PC and remote access. These days, lots of employees have cell phones and remote access, making them reachable nearly all the time. And people want some flexibility in their work lives; if I'm going to be checking e-mail at 5:00 AM, I expect a little bit of slack when it comes to leaving the office a few minutes early.

By creating a culture in which facetime is everything, businesses do themselves and their employees a disservice. Employees who might otherwise work from home or answer their cell phones after office hours will, when faced with a facetime-is-all environment, decide to stop answering those post-5:00 PM phone calls. They'll be a little less likely to log in to do just a bit more work in the evenings. On their days off and vacations, they definitely won't be willing to take calls from the office, because the office has made it clear that it doesn't value their time. And their passion for the organization will wilt away. Ultimately, they'll leave the company to work for businesses that measure what matters. Until then, however, they'll be clock-watchers: there on time, out on time, and probably not terribly productive in between.

If you say that you value your employees' work-life balance, and you say that you want people to want to work for your company, you might want to take a look at your policies around facetime and see if they are congruent with those values. Unless it really matters, don't try to control your employees with the timeclock. In fact, don't try to control them at all; instead, manage them according to what's important. Value their time, and they'll value yours. Give them flexibility, and they'll reward you with loyalty and greater productivity.

People will pay attention to what you measure: do you want your employees to focus on the clock, or do you want them to focus on being great at what they do?

Comments

[Penelope Trunk]

I agree that face time is an absurd standard for measuring performance. But I can't help wondering if the guy was underperforming in his job, and firing him for being late (clear) was a lot easier than firing him for poor performance (murky).

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Penelope, you're absolutely correct - it could've been a performance issue rather than attendance. However, I respectfully disagree that performance is a murky issue; I think that's the case only if the manager does a poor job of communicating expectations and performance gaps. And if that's what happened in this scenario, then shame on the manager for failing to do his job. Just my opinion, of course. :-)