Company with 10% lifetime employee turnover shows their secret is trust

October 31, 2023 10:33 AM

"Here are five critical ways we foster trust in our organization–principles that we believe can work at any level, for any team, in any corporation." Remote work has led to an increase in employee surveillance. Employees are finding out about corporate tracking of their work hours, emails, systems use, and more–all of it secret. This corporate spying destroys trust. If employers are suspicious of their staff, then employees become wary of their employers too. Many workers become more occupied with gaming the tracking system than doing actual work. In fact, research shows that employee-monitoring software actually makes employees more likely to break rules, as the employees subconsciously begin to feel less in control of their own behavior.
posted by folklore724 (26 comments total)

Any instance of the mandative subjunctive makes me rebellious
posted by toodleydoodley at 11:09 AM on October 31, 2023

This Finnish company's five secrets to fostering trust all resolve to different versions of "treat your employees like human people," so it's not really the kind of change in business culture that we would be capable of instituting in America.
posted by Pickman's Next Top Model at 11:21 AM on October 31, 2023 [29 favorites]

I am in HR at an 800+ person company HQd in the US and our turnover is even lower.

"Don't be a dick" speaks all languages.
posted by phunniemee at 11:50 AM on October 31, 2023 [33 favorites]

Employees are finding out about corporate tracking of their work hours, emails, systems use, and more–all of it secret.

Employees are finding that there's important information in the employee handbooks and other policy documents they signed as a requirement of their employment. Shock and surprise ensues.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 12:50 PM on October 31, 2023 [1 favorite]

I know in the US we don't always get 2 weeks of vacation, but...that's terrible. It seems like a pretty low bar to use a minimum 2 weeks of vacation as a demonstration of how you take such good care of your employees and "foster trust".
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 12:56 PM on October 31, 2023 [2 favorites]

I think the requirement is that you have to take a minimum two week long vacation, not that that’s the minimum number of vacation days total. The Finnish minimum number of vacation days is 30.
posted by rockindata at 1:23 PM on October 31, 2023 [11 favorites]

'Move Mouse' is a great little application if you work from home and have a distrustful manager who is always peering at whether your availability is green (Available) or yellow (Away, period of inactivity) on Microsoft Teams.
posted by chmmr at 2:34 PM on October 31, 2023 [2 favorites]

You have an admin password to install that with*, right?

*Or delete a shortcut from the desktop or do almost literally anything a computer user might want to do.
posted by Naberius at 2:43 PM on October 31, 2023 [4 favorites]

'Move Mouse' is a great little application if you work from home and have a distrustful manager who is always peering at whether your availability is green (Available) or yellow (Away, period of inactivity) on Microsoft Teams.

Assuming your IT team doesn't monitor/limit what you can install on your computer.

(As someone who likes to work on paper, I'm really bothered by that kind of surveillance. And our IT team definitely does limit what can be installed on our machines.)
posted by synecdoche at 2:45 PM on October 31, 2023 [3 favorites]

One reason big corporations want everyone back at the office post pandemic is that it is so much easier to bully and humiliate underlings in person than it is online.
posted by y2karl at 3:00 PM on October 31, 2023 [15 favorites]

Well, you don't just go and build a panopticon and then leave it empty.
posted by Pickman's Next Top Model at 3:34 PM on October 31, 2023 [14 favorites]

An alternative to mouse jiggling software is mouse jiggling hardware. Can be a little USB device that appears in the OS as a second mouse, or a thing with a motor in it that you put your mouse atop of you want it firewalled and totally invisible. Highly recommended.
posted by supercres at 4:09 PM on October 31, 2023 [9 favorites]

Companies aren't going to "maximize job security"*, they're going to replace employees as soon as practical with AI. It might not improve quality but it will be much easier to calculate ROI.


*But unions will.
posted by tommasz at 4:35 PM on October 31, 2023 [4 favorites]

Just don't be an arsehole. It's not that hard and the employer benefits by making more money. I doubt we'll ever get to a point where this is actually understood by employers, unfortunately.
posted by dg at 5:34 PM on October 31, 2023 [3 favorites]

The company is Framery (since 2010). Maybe it's just me, but there's something a little bit 1984ish about their product. Mind you, I could see them as recording booths.
posted by BWA at 7:56 PM on October 31, 2023 [1 favorite]

Saying "well it says in the employee handbook that we can (abusive thing), should have read it," sidesteps many issues;

1. You seldom if ever get a handbook to review before you have already quit your previous job

2. Employee handbooks can be and are often at odds with actual law (such as rules forbidding salary discussions)

3. Many people have experienced working for companies who refuse to enforce their own handbook rules on certain people
posted by emjaybee at 8:54 PM on October 31, 2023 [10 favorites]

4. Many people have experienced working for companies who refuse to enforce their own handbook rules on the company itself.
posted by dg at 9:23 PM on October 31, 2023 [7 favorites]

This is where I'd normally say "BURN IT ALL THE FUCK DOWN." But you already know I'd say that so I'm not gonna this time.
posted by evilDoug at 10:27 PM on October 31, 2023 [1 favorite]

These look like great little booths for spreading COVID in.
posted by Dokterrock at 10:38 PM on October 31, 2023 [1 favorite]

2. Employee handbooks can be and are often at odds with actual law (such as rules forbidding salary discussions)

I once saw an employee handbook containing a clause that the company was permitted to conduct a personal search when an employee left the company.

I explained to the employer that, should they suspect an employee of theft, the correct procedure was to call the police, and that if instead they attempted to enforce this clause, if would be the employee themselves who would call the police.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 11:51 PM on October 31, 2023 [1 favorite]

Can be a little USB device that appears in the OS as a second mouse, or a thing with a motor in it that you put your mouse atop of you want it firewalled and totally invisible. Highly recommended.

Seconding the recommendation for the physical mouse jiggler device. Some companies run scans for software or strange USB devices.

Look for a mouse jiggler device that randomizes the timing as well.
posted by Fleebnork at 4:06 AM on November 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

The company is Framery (since 2010). Maybe it's just me, but there's something a little bit 1984ish about their product.

We have a few of these at my office. They're fine, they get very hot and stuffy if the ventilation fan isn't working. But whenever I use it to make a personal phone call I'm reminded that I will probably never again have a company workspace with walls and a closable door.
posted by JoeZydeco at 4:57 AM on November 1, 2023

1. You seldom if ever get a handbook to review before you have already quit your previous job

There’s also the not-uncommon situation where a company doesn’t have an employee handbook at all. Or an actual HR department, for that matter.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:50 AM on November 1, 2023 [2 favorites]

May I be really tedious here and point out that '10% lifetime employee turnover' on its own does not necessarily mean 'this is a good company to work at'.

I once joined a company whose lifetime employee turnover was way lower than 10%. It turned out almost everybody who worked there had joined as a fresh graduate, and had never left. The atmosphere was collegey, incestuous and very, very cliquey. Most of the staff were single and lived in shared houses with each other as if they were still at university; a disproportionate number of the others had married someone within the company. There wasn't so much a problem of work-life balance as of work-life separation. From a professional point of view, as nobody had ever worked anywhere else, they had no point of reference. Most of the processes - both technical and human - were hideously out of date. Every time I pointed out how a practice might be improved or made efficient, I got blank, quizzical stares and replies of 'But that's the way we've always done it here.'

I left, quickly.

Sorry for the derail. I just received an <up> event on the button of mine that the post's heading pushed, and I can return to normal now. Thanks for listening.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 7:09 AM on November 2, 2023 [3 favorites]

> You have an admin password to install that with*, right?

Where I work you can ask for a temporary admin password with a reasonable explanation. ("Hey ITfolks I use [thingamajiggie] to manage my [whatsits] so I need an admin password to install that on my machine.") I think the admin privileges last 20 minutes or something. Anyway, I immediately run a command prompt with the elevated privileges and then make my regular account into an administrator:

net localgroup Administrators [myname] /add

And ITfolks don't seem to notice that I never have to ask for their help again. Please don't tell them.
posted by secretseasons at 11:56 AM on November 4, 2023 [2 favorites]

Just be careful doing that sort of thing. Many places have policies that forbid "circumventing IT security".
posted by Fleebnork at 4:12 AM on November 8, 2023