Why organizations are using remote employee activity monitoring software?

During the pandemic, there was a complete overhaul in the way we live our lives and carry out our daily routine. It also altered the way we conduct our business. Work from home emerged as new normal that enabled companies to scrape through in rough weather when the lockdown was the order of the day. Most of the companies with modern technological infrastructure easily negotiated the transformation while others struggled to keep pace with the new scenario.

The work from home was both a familiar and an alien concept for companies and to the employees but is being gradually adopted across the board. However, the transformation of work culture from office to home wasn’t as smooth as it was initially believed, there were certain impediments for companies to change and adopt a new routine.

According to a survey by SAP Concur published in TOI dated 29 July 2020, 88% of workers now prefer to work from home and 69% believe it has increased their productivity (Source). For companies that were facing problems, it became imperative to embrace new technology and start operations as early as possible. In this blog, we will be discussing work from home solutions provider to help your enterprise successfully navigate a path against any pitfall it confronts in today’s scenario.

Work from home – Problems

Work from home is fraught with problems both for employees and for an organization. An organization may lack the necessary technology infrastructure or the adaptability issues to remote work procedures. Some other major problems faced by companies looking to board employees on remote work platform are:

Communication barrier

One biggest issue in a remote work environment is the communication barrier, as employees are not available face to face to interact with each other. As a result, team collaboration vital for the smooth functioning of an organization suffers. The lack of transparency further leads to distrust, confusion, and often conflicts among the team members. An office environment with effective in-person meetings, face-to-face discussions are not possible from home, negatively affecting the work-flow.

Employee engagement issues

Companies often face difficulty to engage with new employees who struggle to understand the work culture of a company when working from home. Employees sooner or later lose the required sense of belonging or common identity, peer pressure to excel, leading to low morale and a lack of integrity towards an organization. The low morale and lost sense of belonging may lead to a high attrition rate.

Technology hiccups

Lack of technology infrastructure among small and medium enterprises is a major problem in implementing remote work culture. Companies located in non-metro cities are specifically not tech-savvy to hire employees on remote work platforms. In addition to it, broader problems like application crashes, internet outages, broadband network limitations, and stable internet create further hindrances. A company needs to have a viable and modern technology infrastructure to avoid any disruptions in its operations.

Security issues

Malware attacks are frequent and no organization is immune to them, however, workers operating from remote locations are more prone to such attacks according to reports. One reason being the use of personal laptops or desktops that are devoid of enterprise-grade security. Connecting home-based devices to the enterprise network can seriously jeopardise the safety of an organization. The result of such attacks is the data breach causing irreparable financial loss to the company.

Benefits of using remote activity monitoring software

As it became necessary for companies to adapt to the changed scenario, these companies are gradually embracing new technology that can be their savior in the current environment. To find solutions to the emerging problems of working from home, an effective ‘Remote Employee Activity Monitoring Software’ is available that can come in handy for the companies. The efficient software solutions are custom-built to cater to all the requirements of a company and help them in conducting smooth operations. The software is specifically designed to keep all requirements of an organization in mind. Some of the benefits of using remote employee activity monitoring software are:

• The software remotely and successfully manages the business process.
• It is instrumental in avoiding any disruptions in services such as corporate training.
• The software seamlessly maintains customer relationships and related services.
• From a remote location, it can manage the processes like packaging, manufacturing, distribution, etc.
• It provides real-time data on the company’s operations or business processes.
• Hassle-free communication with employees, business partners, and other different stakeholders.
• It ensures access to a cloud-based environment keeping data safe and provide backup.
• It enhances productivity with simple interfaces.

Benefits for employees

As an employee, the remote employee activity monitoring software is a boon that can help in enhancing his productivity without affecting his privacy. The benefits for an employee are:

An employee can manage breaks according to requirement during which the camera is disabled for privacy purpose

Video conferencing is available ensuring better coordination among the team members.

The remote employee activity monitoring software is responsible for ensuring seamless connectivity vital for smooth operations.

Benefits for companies

Security

One of the benefits of user activity monitoring is in cybersecurity. These tools secure the network and devices that in-turn reduces any risk of a data breach. It further protects the proprietary information along with the trade secrets of a company. Some of the threats the companies face include:

• An employee shares proprietary information with an unauthorized user
• Cyber-attack or Malware attack
• Uploading malware by an employee to the company’s device or network.
• An employee unintentionally accesses harmful web content.

User activity monitoring tools can track the threats and thereby allow the security experts to respond to the threat in real-time.

Legal issues

Some companies rely on employee activity monitoring solutions to be legally compliant and protect themselves from any litigation. For eg. Companies in the financial sector have very strict rules and regulations to ensure what kind of info can be shared. The activity monitoring tool enables a company to know that the users are following the guidelines.

Moreover, if any illegal activity is carried out by any employee, he can be easily and readily tracked and taken to task. One benefit of the tool is it not all carry surveillance in real-time but also stores it that can be useful in case of any litigation by the customer or disgruntled employee in the future.

Employee activity monitoring

The tool can be used for employee activity monitoring, to see how the user is utilizing his/her time during office hours.

In addition to the above benefits that an employee can avail, the software is an activity monitoring tool helpful for supervisors and the management to keep an eye on employee working. The software ensures seamless connectivity among the team members, that is maintained without any interruption.

The software has emerged as an important and beneficial tool for companies who wanted to verify that their employees are utilizing the time productively and not wasting it on leisure activities like watching videos, or on social media.

Challenges of using software for employee monitoring

Employee activity monitoring software is increasingly being employed by companies to get the necessary information on attendance, time spent on working, break duration, etc. However with increasing usage, certain challenges are emerging, some of these are:

Unfamiliarity

One major challenge is the negative feedback from employees on being closely monitored by software. It is a challenge to introduce software to monitor user activity throughout the day.

Affects employee morale

The software can ultimately lead to low morale among the workforce. The company must take the employees in confidence before introducing the software and giving strong reasoning that justifies the usage of the software.

Solutions

As the concept of working from home is becoming a new normal post-Covid pandemic, the companies are increasingly facing new problems. These problems like a data breach to the low morale of the employees and wastage of time by employees on unproductive activities are some of the problems. To overcome these problems, companies are using employee activity monitoring solutions. The software provides remote working solutions to the problems faced by different organizations. Some of these are:

The software helps in workforce monitoring

The software ensures the best customer support without compromising data security while working remotely. The tool maintains transparency and builds the trust necessary to increase productivity by keeping an eye on the working of the employees. The software further helps in understanding the functioning of the team, to figure out what works for them and what doesn’t and helps in improving operational efficiency.

Assures transparency

The software helps in monitoring the activities of the employees in keeping track of their tasks and projects. This helps in enhancing accountability and transparency along with resolving any conflict in the office.

Remote team collaboration tools

The tools are a necessary part of creating a robust and lively work-place communication environment. It allows seamless remote collaboration between the team members and the organization using controlled groups, private channels, and broadcast features. The group chats come in handy to instantly connect with supervisors, trainers, or subject matter experts. The tool can be used by a supervisor to flag important updates obviating the need to send e-mails or phone calls.

Upgrade the project deliverability

The software enables the company to deliver all the pending projects on time. The team members can use the tool, prioritize their tasks while avoiding the gaps during the process. It helps in better time management and allows the employees to work on their problem areas.

Enhance the productivity of employees

By keeping track of the employee’s activity, the company can save 20% (approx.) of the time that is otherwise wasted on the unfruitful work. Thus, by monitoring the activities, the company can supervise and channelize the time wasted by employees. The employees on their part can devote more time to the company’s work making themselves more productive.

Reporting management platform

The software can be used effectively by a supervisor to manage and access the performance and report of the team. It optimizes the supervisor’s duty and brings the team members of the organization on the same page. Using the software, the management can access every-day reports that can help improve the prospects of the company.

Data security

Not just productivity, even data security is also a big concern for companies. With the increase in remote work culture, the data is becoming increasingly vulnerable. A data breach is possible both from any external cyber-attack or from the user’s end that can potentially damage the company’s prospects. According to a survey, 66% of companies in India faced a data breach during the pandemic affected by the remote working model as reported in economic times reported on 20^th August 2020 (Source).

Network health check

The work-force operating from a remote location needs all the help it can get to ensure no disruptions in functioning. The tool proactively finds the fault before it creates any problems for the end-user.

Conclusion

The COVID pandemic disrupted the old working model that was operational for decades. Most of the companies were caught off guard and faced a daunting task in keeping their customer service channels and contact centres operational. During the pandemic, work from home culture became new normal as companies were forced to relocate their work to remote locations. However, working from home has its own set of problems both for the companies and the employees.

While employees faced issues like isolation, lack of discipline, low morale, network issues, etc., the problems faced by companies are performance specific along with security. In helping the companies to tide over the crisis situation, remote employee activity monitoring software comes to the rescue that has definite features tailor-made to solve a company’s problems. From ensuring seamless connectivity to instant chat with a supervisor or trainer whenever and where ever required, the software ensures no disruptions are reported in the operations of the company. The bigger advantage of the software is the AI-based security features and constant user activity monitoring that is necessary to improve productivity. 

Work from home culture is here to stay and if effectively used can result in productivity gains, cost-saving, and a more efficient work-force. As businesses rapidly learn to adjust to the changing environment, the use of employee monitoring software and tools, like those offered by Leapmax, is only going to increase. The software can be an effective tool in maintaining a vibrant work culture even in a remote place but it is equally important for companies to be transparent with employees. The companies should be more forthcoming about the integration of the software and take workers’ consent before implementing it. Before the installation of the software, it is important that both the employees and the company should be on the same page.