Occasionally I get the following question from someone thinking about deploying video in their company for the first time:  How are the employees going to react and will this create a “big brother” like atmosphere that is counter to our open and trusting culture?

I have a number of responses to this question, ranging from the cold/analytical to the more warm and fuzzy (can someone loan me some F? For those in the Myers-Briggs world, check out my ISTP profile for why the latter may be difficult for me)

Everybody’s doing it.

Okay, this is not exactly the most thoughtful response, but it is pretty accurate.  If you are in the retail, restaurant, or just about any other market, it is likely that a high percentage of players in your space have already deployed video.  If you hire employees that have experience in your industry, and given the high turnover in many of these segments it is likely you do, then it is fair to assume that they have worked in companies that use video.  Therefore your deployment of video is going to be par for the course and nothing new for a good portion of your employees.   Pretty logical argument, but not one that typically resonates as everyone believes that their company is different and culture is something to seriously protect.

Aren’t you already monitoring them?

Another stab at logic to dispel the concern.  The big brother concern is that you don’t trust your employees and that you are suddenly going to watch their every move.  If you trust your employees so much then you probably don’t audit your stores or have a loss prevention group.  Oh wait, you do audit your stores and you do have a loss prevention or risk group.  Huh.  Checking on your employees to make sure there aren’t any intentional or unintentional mistakes that might be costing the company money.  Sounds kind of big brother to me.  Only difference between using accounting and exception reports to conduct audits and using video is that you don’t have to guess what really happened when you use video.  Again, very logical but again not the most effective argument given how important companies view their culture.

Game Film

The strongest argument I have used to counter the big brother fear is to make a sports analogy.  The way I think about the value is very analogous to how sports teams use video. All football, basketball, and other team sports rely heavily on video to improve their team’s performance. Despite having set plays (standard processes), a quarterback and coaches that are involved in the action (managers and area managers), and plenty of people watching and/or impacting the performance (on-site management, rest of the employees, customers, etc.) these teams religiously use video to examine each game to understand how they performed and how they can learn from their performance to do better next time. In the heat of the moment, even the best quarterback or coach can’t know exactly what is happening in every aspect of the action. They use video to break down successful and unsuccessful plays so that they can figure out what worked and what didn’t and then review it with their players so that everyone can benefit.  This is what good companies do with video, and this can be part of a strong, trusting culture.  This is an argument that has had more impact because it offers an explanation and not an excuse for deploying video.

My final comment on the subject is usually this  – If you are concerned about your employees perceiving your video solution as Big Brother, don’t use it that way.