MZMORALE ZEROthe antithesis of employee engagement
DIRECTIVE 023 / WORTH

REWARD FACE TIME

The easiest contribution to recognize is the employee who is still physically available to be recognized.

Allow performance to remain formally output-based while informally noticing who arrives early, stays late and remains visible. Do not create an explicit attendance criterion. Passive observation works better when nobody believes it is part of the evaluation system.

Primary: WORTHFAIRNESSCONTROL
RATIONALE
Visibility supplies effortless evidence of dependability and commitment, even when it supplies no evidence about the work itself.
SUCCESS INDICATOR
Employees learn that leaving after completing the work produces a weaker signal than remaining where a manager can observe them not leaving.
COMMON FAILURE
Separating performance evidence from physical visibility and checking whether location or hours are influencing trait judgments without job-relevant evidence.
STATUS
Canonical / approved

Reconstructed Handbook series.

THE UNFORTUNATE PART

Unfortunately, the research…

Claim

Research on passive face time found that simply being observed at work can produce spontaneous trait inferences: expected face time was associated with perceptions of dependability, while extra-hours face time was associated with perceptions of commitment.

Evidence

Qualitative and experimental studies found that passive workplace visibility affected how employees were perceived even when observers were not deliberately using face time as an evaluation criterion.

Strength: Moderate

Sources

The Directive is satire. The research summary is not. Evidence is stated separately and qualified to the underlying literature rather than treated as proof of the joke.

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