What a headline…

H&M fined a cool 35 million Euro for excessive employee surveillance.

This includes extensive staff surveys (covering details of holidays, medical symptoms & diagnoses for illnesses).

In some cases they even sought private details from informal chats (including family issues & religious beliefs).

This information was then stored and used to evaluate work performance and make employment decisions.

But what can we learn?

It seems H&M have problems in building great teams. Which may come down to a lack of team building knowledge.

If you build a high performing team, with shared values & who take personal responsibility, you don’t need surveillance.

High performing teams are self managing, and always do the right thing for customers & the organisation.

Building a high performing team is hard though, which is why many organisations don’t do it.

It’s hard to find the right people with the virtues you need.

Although, team building is not that simple…

You have to be open & transparent, include the team in the financials & reward them as the business succeeds.

Our team are trusted to make critical business decisions, to make sure customers get the very best service.

In return they share in the future success of our organisation.

…we certainly don’t need surveillance tactics!