Over the past decade or so, the installation and use of surveillance as a management tool for restaurants and retailers has become commonplace. However, there are still a few businesses that are just now adding CCTV as a method to better understand their businesses.

There are two things that typically occur when a business installs surveillance for the first time. The first is an immediate jump in employee and business performance, as the Hawthorne Effect takes hold (more on this in a later post). The second thing that happens is either an explicit or implicit rejection of the practice by the business’ employees. We’ll focus on the latter for this post.

The primary reasons for employee rejection of surveillance are two-fold. First, dishonest employees will recognize that the presence of surveillance can potentially reveal this behavior if they continue it, which can lead to negative consequences for them. Second, the general perception of business surveillance is that it is only used negatively for punitive measures. Unfortunately, this second reason for rejection is often untrue.

The best business owners truly use surveillance as a management tool – and that means using it both to discover opportunities for improvement, as well as best practices and great performance that should be rewarded and encouraged. As we’ve spoken to numerous quick serve restaurant (QSR) and convenience store owners, managers and employees, we’ve discovered an interesting problem that faced almost all of them: the best employees would leave because they felt unrecognized. Not only that, but they felt that their opportunities to shine were often sullied by the behavior of other employees who were less inclined to perform.

For owners and managers who actively used surveillance to identify their best employees and reward them, good employee retention became a breeze – and it had an impact on the rest of the employees as well, driving performance higher thoughout the organization. Of course, adding ReTel’s ConstantAudit service has helped many of these owners and managers discover these star employees even sooner, and track better performance more often.

So if you have unsung heroes, use every tool that works to discover them and recognize them. If you don’t have the tools to do this, then get them. The impact on that individual, as well as your entire organization, is well worth the effort.