21st century workers facing Big Brother business threat

E.learning Age, Dec 2004/Jan 2005

Today's working world is making a factory floor of the office. Office workers face the threat of increasing control, monitoring, scrutiny and micromanagement, according toa new report published by the London School of Economics (LSE). Supply chain technology developed for monitoring goods, the research argues, isnow being applied to individuals and the creation of knowledge instead of products.

The report, entitled The Future Role of Trust in Work is sponsored by Microsoft and is part of Tomorrow's Work, a long-term study initiated by Microsoft in October 2003. It argues that outdated command and control management culture is causing managers to misuse technology, over scrutinising worker performance. This means employees are reacting to communication from employers rather than interacting with customers - therefore ultimately damaging UK productivity.

It involves organisations including the LSE, TUC and CBI, and exploreshow we manage our working lives and professional environments in the digital age. The author, Dr Carsten Sorensen of the LSE, said that British business needed to find new waysof managing people in the faceofthechanging technological world of work.

He said: "Workers need a new deal. We cannot assume as wh i te col lar workers we have com plete freedom. However, bosses cannot manage as they have before by command and control - there is simply too much information in a modern technology driven service economy.

Outdated management practices such as these are causing the continuing productivity gap between the UKand continental Europe. We need to trust people more."

lan Brinkley of the TUC said that workers were becoming unhappy with control: "Recent research from the The Economic and Social Research Council found that job satisfaction has fallen over the last ten years because employees feel that they have more and more people looking over their shoulder. We need to rebuild trust, share risk and move to more partnership in the workforce."

Sorensen said that trust was crucial to the 21st century economy. "We are entering a world of work in which there is everywhere to go and nowhere to hide. Managers learn to manage by outcome. We need to set the workers free to interact with customers and therefore learn to trust. Otherwise, British productivity will continue to suffer."