How do you get people to do what they’re supposed to do, particularly when it comes to following standard processes that are essential to getting their job done successfully? And does employee monitoring help or hinder these efforts?

These aren’t new questions, as anyone who’s heard of Frederick Taylor can attest. But they’re important ones. Take health care — more specifically, take washing your hands. We know that this simple action can help prevent deadly hospital infections. And yet it’s really hard for people to remember to do so, often through no fault of their own.

Earlier research from Wharton’s Hengchen Dai and Katherine Milkman, along with Kenan-Flagler Business School professors David Hofmann and Bradley Staats, found that the further caregivers progressed into their shifts, the less likely they were to wash their hands according to standard procedure. This effect heightened during particularly intense work. It’s no wonder that hand hygiene compliance rates can tick below 50%.

So under what conditions might people be more likely to remember to do so? The same set of authors analyzed data from an RFID-based system that monitored hygiene compliance across 42 hospitals over three and a half years (this includes both hand washing and using a gel sanitizer, for example). They wanted to better understand how the act of being monitored — how the RFID system itself — affected employee behavior. Does knowing that you’re being monitored make your more likely to comply? And if so, can it lead to positive habit-forming over time?

More broadly, what does this tell us about tracking employees’ actions in general, something that is becoming more and more common with the rise of people analytics?

First, the implementation of RFID monitoring did lead to an increase in hand hygiene compliance, particularly when managers successfully prepared their employees for its implementation. And it lasted at organizations that continued to use the technology — for almost two years before gradually dropping off. However, when RFID monitoring was completely abandoned at a number of the organizations (in many cases due to grants running out), compliance rates dropped to numbers below the rates before RFID tracking was even implemented. The habit didn’t stick — and things actually got worse.

The study’s authors aren’t 100% sure about the reasons behind this outcome. But Bradley Staats posits that “the results are consistent with a story of motivational crowding out. In the simplest form, we engage in effortful activities for external outside reasons (e.g. we get paid, someone is watching) and for internal reasons (e.g. we enjoy it or doing it makes us feel competent).”

While the external reminder of being watched can result in behavior change, it can also crowd out internal ones. “The reason this is so problematic,” Staats explained to me over email, “and it may be going on in our setting, is that if someone does an activity for internal reasons (e.g. hand washing is a good thing to do) and then switches to doing it for external reasons (e.g., due to monitoring), then when the external reasons are removed there is no, or at least less, motivation left.”

Ultimately, he says, this is one reason why you shouldn’t just track employee behavior for the sake of tracking employee behavior. Ask yourself what value monitoring will bring your most important stakeholders: your employees, your customers, or your patients. Also ask what else you can do to encourage and motivate your workers; Staats notes that “by far the most powerful intervention was hospital leadership signaling the importance of the initiative.” He says his next area of research will be exploring interventions that could drive compliance rates even higher.

All of this highlights that, while RFID tracking and other methods of monitoring can have positive effects, they’re not “fire and forget” technologies. They require thoughtfulness and strategy. RFID monitoring, Staats notes, “is a complement to good management practices, but by itself won’t completely solve a problem.”