#4
 Remote work
fact checking report
#6

False

Managers need to constantly check what remote employees are up to

False:

Instead of constantly monitoring employees, it is more productive to build trust between managers and employees. That way, managers will trust the employees to complete work on time, while employees will feel more loyalty to the manager and their organisation and produce good quality work, without feeling like they are constantly being watched. That being said - professional research conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic found that employees felt that they did not receive enough feedback from their managers18. Hence, managers need to find effective ways of providing constructive feedback without the appearance of micromanagement.

Evidence for:

One study found that being monitored helped newly remote employees to stay on track with their work in lockdown during the pandemic1. Another study found that employees could easily become distracted with other family tasks when working from home11. Checking up on employees could help employees avoid procrastination.

Evidence against:

Again, this is related to the issue of trust. Micromanagement can spring out of a lack of face-to-face connections in remote teams8, whereby managers adopt the perspective that just because they cannot see an employee, they are not working. But this practice is counterproductive, and can lead to a further reduction in trust, organisational attachment, and work quality8.