Employee monitoring software is a useful software for improving productivity in the workplace. The workplace can be an office or your remote location.
Employee monitoring helps in understanding workforce analytics. It gives an insight into when employees are working and how they are performing.
Earlier, the employee was associated with tracking employee hours and related oversights, which helped understand the concerns of employees and the organization.
However, with the changing times, organizations have come to several conclusions on employee monitoring. Employee monitoring is an essential contributor to employee productivity and engagement.
Thus leading to overall employee efficiency. According to a study, it has been found that when employees are aware they are being observed, their productivity increases by 7%.
Employee monitoring should be transparent. A transparent employee monitoring tool helps understand the beach among people, processes, and technology.
This article is a detailed guide for employee monitoring and how it is used for organizations. We will also explore the various advantages of the same with its drawbacks.
We will check the legality of employee monitoring and how to pick the correct system. It will give you some tips on acting and using the information to make your workplace transparent and employee-friendly.
Table of contents
Defining Employee Monitoring
Employee monitoring can be defined as a concept of tracking employee productivity, activity, and performance. It helps in identifying the ongoing problems and breaches in the workforce.
Thus, it increases employee engagement and reduces the inefficiency of the system. In recent times, the system of employee monitoring has evolved and added the concept of workforce analytics.
As a result, a detailed process has been installed, which increases employee engagement and productivity. Such analytics mechanisms help identify employee behavior, eventually leading to company growth and profitability.
The data gathered from the analysis are used to observe the patterns and similarities among teams and departments. These similarities help in gaining insight into the process.
It also allows you to work on the weak areas for improvement. This data covers time spent on unproductive tasks and when each employee is most productive.
As per a study by the American Management Association, 43% of U.S. employers monitor their employees’ email and other electronic interactions. Employee monitoring software helps get a clear picture of how work is done in the workplace.
Advantages of Employee Monitoring
Employee computer monitoring software can assist in detecting suspicious activity that may signal insider threats.
Monitoring employee activity allows companies to find potential red flags and take proper actions to protect the company.
This may include adopting security protocols, offering more training, or taking legal action if needed. Employee tracking is helpful for the organization as it helps the organization overcome the compliance challenges that can come up in the workplace.
Below are some of the major advantages of having employee monitoring in the workplace.
1. Increased Productivity
After understanding the data, employers can increase employee productivity at the workplace. The employee monitoring tool helps in finding out the key strengths and limitations of your team.
Understanding your team’s limitations is important. Based on the findings, employers can involve training and coaching for performance improvement.
Also, the analytics will help you distribute the work among team members based on their skills. When all the points are followed, it leads to an overall increase in productivity.
2. Financial Growth
As per a recently published report, each year, American businesses lose $650 billion due to unproductive staff. But we can reduce this loss using correct analytics and productivity tracking software.
Companies can use these workforce analytics to improve employee productivity, revenue, sales, happiness, and efficiency.
Also, employee tracking helps you in finding out the unused or unproductive tools in the organization. This will help in the cost cutting of such applications and tools.
3. Enhanced Security
Employee monitoring software with screenshots helps employers discover questionable user activity, such as private documents being read or shared with third parties.
This level of control can assist in protecting your company’s critical data. Employee monitoring software allows you to access saved documents, installed applications, websites visited, and messages exchanged from work computers and mobile devices.
You may also keep track of business files, financial information, and customer data. This level of oversight can assist your company avoid cybercrime, insider threats, data breaches, and suspicious conduct and help you maintain data security.
It helps you to find individuals leaking sensitive information or participating in unethical behavior, which can cause a threat to the company.
Disadvantages of Employee Monitoring
The goal of employee monitoring is to develop a productive and happy work culture and not to spy on the employees. However, your team may not see it this way at first.
Therefore, employee monitoring can have some disadvantages as well.
1. Lack of Privacy and Trust
Employees may think that they are being observed all the time as the employer is constantly tracking employee hours. People use work computers for personal reasons and prefer to keep their activities private.
Also, they dislike the concept of someone “watching their every move.” Therefore, employee monitoring can increase the concern for employee privacy. This also leads to a lack of trust among employees and the organization.
Employees might think that the company does not trust them and their credibility. To overcome this challenge, it is important to reassure the employees that their privacy is important.
Management is not watching them. Instead, they are analyzing the data. The company is not interested in personal information and is looking for the opportunity to help them increase their efficiency.
2. Increased Stress Level
Once the employees know that their activities are getting tracked, it will create a sense of disturbance, and thus, it will increase their stress levels among them.
It may also cause them to take less break time, and they will become more concerned about their output. This will affect the workplace negatively.
Knowing that their activities are being tracked may cause a person to work harder, take fewer breaks, and become concerned about their output. And it will result in a loss of motivation.
To overcome such workplace issues, explain to the employees what type of data is being tracked and also explain the purpose of the same. It will reassure the trust and bond between the employees and the company.
Legality of Employee Monitoring
There are various misconceptions concerning the legality of data collection that may confuse you, such as:
Is employee surveillance legal?
The answer is Yes. In India, employee monitoring comes under the Information Technology Act of 2000. It is allowed as long as the objective behind it is acceptable and genuine.
As per workplace regulations, you may be digitally watched by your employer. For example, they can read your emails stored on their servers and watch your activity on the system.
However, the only restriction currently in place is phone calls. Employers cannot monitor employees’ phone calls without their knowledge and consent.
Employees are not required permission to engage in any other activity utilizing company-owned equipment.
For the best results and to establish a culture of trust, always inform your employees that you intend to install time-tracking software and explain how it will be utilized.
This will help them to understand what types of data are collected. The greater the level of transparency, the less probable it is that you may face legal complications.
Conclusion
Employee monitoring is a valuable tool for improving employee productivity and efficiency. It is legal. However, the objective has to be reasonable and clear so that the regulating authority has a clear knowledge of the same.
Leapmax is the one-stop solution for all your employee monitoring problems. With its Workforce analytics, one can keep track of employee hours and use them to increase productivity.
Leapmax is one of the best employee time-tracking software for growing your business and saving monitoring time. Thus leading to a happy and employee-friendly work environment.
