Because many people equate employee monitoring with video surveillance, mistrust, and micromanaging an employee’s workday, it has a somewhat negative reputation. Our goal at Controlio is to alter such beliefs and demonstrate the advantages that properly executed employee monitoring can offer to both businesses and workers.
To help you decide if using monitoring technologies is the correct choice for you, you will learn more about the monitoring benefits (and drawbacks) of employee monitoring today. By the end of this post, you will not only have a list of benefits and drawbacks to consider for yourself, but you will also know how to effectively counteract the drawbacks of employee monitoring and discover which productivity queries can be addressed by efficient monitoring solutions.
Modifying the Discussion of Employee Monitoring
Anything a business does to measure employee performance, keep an eye on user activity in real time, evaluate behavior, and gather documentation of work hours is referred to as employee monitoring. Employee monitoring is one of the broad fields. The applications are very wide. In earlier days, managers were moving about the office with a clipboard and jotting down everything from productivity to workflows to staff mood. Monitoring devices that record computer activity have grown in popularity as our working methods become more computerized.
When considering the benefits and drawbacks of employee monitoring challenges, individuals have long relied on that definition, which places a strong emphasis on time tracking and the general collecting of computer activities. The necessity of openness and cooperation to guarantee that information obtained from an employee monitoring system is utilized for the good of all parties, not just the management, is one of Controlio’s core values.
Organizations, teams, and individuals can discover new ways to collaborate and investigate ways to increase team productivity when they have access to macro-level data on time expenditure. For this reason, we began by rethinking how we see employee work activity tracking.
The important thing is to see staff monitoring as a tool, not a goal unto itself. You might as well acquire the information directly from the source as it must have come from someplace. However, it’s crucial to maintain perspective! Because you are concerned about what each employee is doing, you are not merely spying on them by keeping an eye on their actions. Rather, you’re gathering information on work activities that will support your efforts to increase productivity.
It’s much simpler to realize that employee monitoring and transparency are completely compatible after you’ve changed your viewpoint. In actuality, the organization, the employer, and the employee can all benefit from possessing this data.
The Benefits and Drawbacks of Staff Monitoring
It’s crucial to consider how any new technology may affect your company, and staff monitoring systems are no exception. The organization’s strategy for the usage and dissemination of data frequently determines the benefits and drawbacks of employee monitoring. Employee monitoring actually has more benefits than drawbacks when done in an open and honest manner.
Employee Monitoring’s Benefits
Increased productivity among employees: You may assess and enhance employee productivity over time by collecting data about job activities, which is distinct from collecting personal information or tracking keystrokes. It can assist you in determining which staff are at risk of burnout, identifying inefficient workflows, and more. If your data gathering reveals that a team or employee is having difficulties, you may use that knowledge to guide proactive phone or in-person discussions that address the problems you’ve found.
Enhanced retention and engagement of employees: Reducing employee turnover requires raising engagement and morale among staff members. Generally speaking, engaged workers are more innovative, more efficient, and more likely to form enduring bonds that support teams. You can see typical indicators of disengagement through employee monitoring, such as a rise in social media usage on work-related devices or a decline in productive time. After that, you can work with the person to get things back on track and implement focused interventions to better understand the causes of disengagement.
Optimized business processes: It can be challenging to spot apps or business processes that are no longer useful, particularly in the age of remote work, where it’s harder than ever to assess employee performance informally on a daily basis. Monitoring tools assist businesses in identifying poor procedures or resource usage by both in-person and remote staff. Monitoring technologies also make it simpler to keep tabs on the effectiveness of your attempts to increase productivity, providing you with the information you need to tweak and streamline procedures.
Revenue growth: It goes without saying that higher revenue will result from increased productivity and fewer inefficient processes. Better yet, by spotting any unnecessary or underutilized software, a decent monitoring and management solution can help you cut expenses while simultaneously improving staff morale and lowering licensing costs.
Decreased risk of operational compliance: When used appropriately, employee monitoring software can assist companies in lowering the possibility of data breaches or compliance violations brought on by careless employees, a lack of security awareness, or dangerous behavior. If a violation does happen, it can also provide you with a record of who may be at fault.
The Drawbacks of Employee Surveillance
Despite all the benefits, there are a few drawbacks to employee monitoring that should also be taken into account.
Employee privacy problems: When discussing various forms of employee monitoring, it’s normal for privacy concerns and reservations about the security of personal data to come up. Employees must be aware of what data is and is not gathered, as well as how it is used. Explain that you want to gather information to gain a better understanding of your employees’ job, not observe them. Employers and employees alike benefit from the insights that are obtained through transparent and cooperative employee monitoring.
Employee Mistrust: Your employees may get irate, unhappy, and even disengaged if they believe you are spying on them; this is exactly the opposite of what employee monitoring is intended to prevent. Employee buy-in is necessary for employee monitoring to be successful, therefore you must show your staff that you are gathering data for the correct purposes and aren’t just tracking for the sake of tracking.
Actually, using the correct workforce analytics software gives you the best of both worlds: a method to employee monitoring that maintains trust AND employee data directly from the source to help you create data-driven insights. You can allay worries and get the benefits of employee monitoring when you are completely open and honest with your staff.
