How Surveillance Changes Behavior: A Restaurant Workers Case Study – NYTimes.com

But monitoring software is now available to track all transactions and detect suspicious patterns. In the new study, the tracking software was NCR’s Restaurant Guard product, and NCR provided the data. The software is intentionally set so that a restaurant manager gets only an electronic theft alert in cases that seem to clearly be misconduct. Otherwise, a manager might be mired in time-consuming detective work instead of running the restaurant.
The savings from the theft alerts themselves were modest, $108 a week per restaurant. However, after installing the monitoring software, the revenue per restaurant increased by an average of $2,982 a week, or about 7 percent.
The impact, the researchers say, came not from firing workers engaged in theft, but mostly from their changed behavior. Knowing they were being monitored, the servers not only pulled back on any unethical practices, but also channeled their efforts into, say, prompting customers to have that dessert or a second beer, raising revenue for the restaurant and tips for themselves.
“The same people who are stealing from you can be set up to succeed,” said Mr. Pierce of Washington University.
In the research, the data sets were sizable. For example, there were more than 630,000 transactions by servers tracked and collected each week over the course of the project.
But more significant, the researchers say, is what the data analysis might contribute to fields of study like social psychology and behavioral economics — and the business discipline of human resources management.
In human resources, much emphasis is placed on employee selection: if you pick the right people, they will do the right thing. Instead, this research suggests that the surveillance effect on employee behavior is striking.
“What’s surprising is the weird effectiveness of the intervention, once the monitoring technology is in place,” said Mr. McAfee of M.I.T.
Not surprisingly, NCR is delighted by the results. “It validates the customer data we’ve seen,” said Jeff Hindman, a vice president at NCR. “But this is done by outside experts with the academic standards and statistical rigor they bring to the analysis.”
 
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