Supervisor Monitoring and Human Capital Investment: A Field Experiment

Abstract

We study a reduction in employee monitoring in a field experiment with 2425 employees of a large service organization. Employees are supposed to take part in regular skill assessments for key technical skills and have regular meetings with their supervisors to discuss their development needs. In both the treatment and control group employees are encouraged to make proposals for training measures before the meetings. Employees in the treatment group are told not to reveal the outcomes of the skill assessments and supervisors are explicitly told not to ask for the outcomes but focus on the suggested training measures. We find that this reduction in monitoring reduced assessment participation and assessment scores significantly. Moreover, post-experimental survey outcomes show a significant reduction in job satisfaction, supervisor feedback, and perceived supervisor support of learning. Our findings underscore the importance of supervisor monitoring in the employee development process.