Why is it important to determine how an employee acts in the absence of supervision?
The answer is relatively simple. It has been proven time and again that employees do perform differently under a watchful eye than they do when unattended. Job security, desire to please and succeed, and an internal sense of pride play a role in how a worker responds to being monitored. A University of Chicago article entitled “What Do Laboratory Experiments Tell Us About the Real World” (Levitt, List, June 2006) affirms that people do behave differently when motivated by a watchful eye, as evidenced by the following excerpt: “The weight that an individual places on ‘doing the right thing’ is likely to increase when a subject is being watched.” This quote validates the perception that employee actions and performance would be more favorable and positive if they knew that they were being monitored, insinuating that observation even alters and reinforces our ethical values. When you take into consideration the fact that mystery shoppers report exceptional employee behavior, attitude and
