FACTORS INFLUENCING EMPLOYEE'S PERFORMANCE LEVEL IN THE CONTEXT OF USING ELECTRONIC MONITORING SYSTEMS (EMS)

Abstract

The rapid growth of information and communication technologies (ICT) influenced almost every field of our lives. Meanwhile, organizations are trying to take advantage of this situation by regularly checking these advancements. They also try to ensure that they can secure and protect their resources, tangible or intangible, including their employees. Organizations are eager to save time and supervise productivity based on employee performance level by ensuring efficient usage of the organization's assets. Therefore, developers and human resource specialists have come together to invent tools that attain this goal by deploying electronic monitoring devices, along with their modern related technologies, and integrating them into the organization. The purpose of this research is to scrutinize and understand the factors influencing the employees' level of performance in the context of implementing an Electronic Monitoring System (EMS). The study explores this topic from both, employees, and the organizational perspective. The major factors included in the study and seen as major influencers of employees' performance are Privacy concerns, the autonomy of job and control, fairness of work, trust in management, trust in technology, organization culture, and level of performance. The research model consists of six independent variables describing the factors that would have an impact on the employees' performance level in the context of EMS. These variables are used to develop a survey to examine their effects in the scope of the study and see the influence of EMS on employee performance levels. For sampling processing, citizens, and Resident of Qatar, who are 18 and above and legally employed were considered. The method used was convenience and snowballing sampling techniques. The Survey link was sent to respondents online through a broadcasting email list sent by the researcher to family and friends, and they were asked to distribute it among their networks locally in the State of Qatar. Results of data analysis yielded major support for the research model, where the following has been found: The factors expected to influence employees' performance yielded a significant explanation of variance with a coefficient of determination, R2 to be 74.7%. For Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) factors namely, job autonomy & control and privacy concerns were found to explain favorable organizational culture by 75.7% and 67% respectively. Favorable culture is a significant predictor of both privacy concerns and autonomy, both of which have significant influence over performance level. Trust in management is considered significant and it influences the level of performance under EMS. Fairness at work and trust in technology is not significant in influencing the level of employee performance in the context of EMS. The recommendation of the study can be briefed to employers or employees in the following points: Firstly, employers must prove that EMS is a necessary precaution at the workplace. Secondly, assure employees that the data usage is for work-related decisions only. Meanwhile, employees need to understand that EMS-gathered data is used to assist the appraisal and evaluation procedures that support fairness at work. Last, but certainly not least, employees need to trust their management and technology to protect employee data from any external security risks. The implication of this study can be seen in many aspects, seen in both local and global contexts. The global implications within academia, in the sense of lacking literature that covered all variables used in this research - as it is presented in the literature review chapter, and the combining of variables together to measure performance level in the context of using EMS. Therefore, it was hard to find a connection between variables. The local implications can be extracted from research responses, as this subject is not a common one to discuss in the context of the geographical space of the State of Qatar. There was minimal literature found to defend the same hypothesis within the same geography. This made this study the first of its kind in Qatar to discuss EMS and relate it to the level of performance.