Is being an Undercover Boss ethical?
We've been having an interesting discussion on our LinkedIn group recently after it was revealed in the FT this week that Stephen Martin, CEO of the Clugston Group, a medium-sized civil engineering and logistics company based in the north of England, had gone undercover to learn what his staff were thinking. He disguised himself as an office worker for two weeks, completing shifts at 10 different sites around the country in an attempt to understand exactly what his staff thought about the company.
This week sees the launch of The Undercover Boss, a television series broadcast on Channel 4. The first episode sees the boss of Park Resorts, the holiday camp operator, go undercover in a range of roles to see how his staff operate and what they think of the company.
The discussion on LinkedIn raised some interesting thoughts about candour and trust in an organisation. Clearly having that culture of open communication is crucial if problems are to surface so that they can be subsequently dealt with.
Would this be something your organisation would do? How would you feel if your boss went 'undercover'?
Facebook
LinkedIn
Twitter
YouTube
Comments
Is it really any different to being a mystery shopper? Neither strategy is exactly up front and honest with staff about what you're doing.
Adi, this is a great piece of news. Almost 20 years ago to the day I recall visiting the then MD of Clugston to introduce the topic of "Strategic information flows that create the intelligence for superior performance." Those were the days when such constructs as "communities of practice" and "collective intelligence" had not been invented. However, the idea was to enable the company to get closer to its customers and identify opportunities for projects earlier in their life cycle.
Fast forward 20 years, where we now have the technology to support most forms of communication.... The value of Stephen's initiative ([b]and he needs to come clean with his staff on his motives and next steps)[/b] is that he has recognised the crucial importance of the informal (social) networks that contribute to the operations of the business.
All he needs to do now is to combine what he has learned about these informal flows, combine them with the formal workflow processes and share them with his staff using a [b]value network approach[/b]. The CEO, now President, of a leading Canadian contractor used the value network approach to achieve breakthrough performance 10 years ago and has revamped his company recently in a similar way. I briefly alluded to this at a recent CMI Branch meeting here ... http://tinyurl.com/qk45f6 which shows the business value network.
The interview by Adi with Stephen recorded here http://tinyurl.com/l686jz provides some real nuggets to reflect upon. It provides highly nutritious food for thought to add to the value network perspective and backbone.
I think anything done by a manager to gain deeper insight into his organisation with the purpose being to improve things for the workers - has to be a good thing. However if you're only doing it to catch people out and threaten them with dismissal, I think that's unfair.