When you earn the coveted manager title, you quickly realize that you need a whole new set of skills. Being a manager requires a particular commitment to your subordinates, bringing new responsibilities.
Your own manager may ask you to delegate tasks to your subordinates. How will you know how much work they can handle? And how can you be sure that you are spending the right amount of time (or no time at all) on a given task? That’s where employee monitoring comes in.
An employee monitoring system is a form of surveillance used by employers to track what their employees are doing at work. It can take many forms, but the most common is that managers use it to track time spent on specific tasks, websites visited by employees during work hours, phone calls made, or keystrokes made by employees in more intrusive situations.
While an essential part of management for some, employee tracking has many pros and cons.
Pros of employee monitoring Systems
1. Increased productivity
Employee monitoring can improve productivity. Scientific studies have shown that people perform better when they have an audience. A study on the use of computer monitoring solutions found that employee productivity increases when they know their manager is watching them.
Employee monitoring systems can also have a positive impact on the bottom line. Offering rewards and incentives can increase the effectiveness of monitoring. A well-structured incentive program is also seen as a motivator for employees and a driver for improved performance. In addition, a better understanding of their performance can help improve productivity and provide more appropriate rewards for exceptionally high-quality work.
2. Greater transparency
Managing employees has its own challenges. Most of the time, you don’t know when employees start working.
Either they are really working or wasting their time on social media.
How much time are they spending on tools like Slack, Google Drive, and other project management tools?
This can also impact employees, as it can be hard to justify why specific tasks take so long.
3. Fewer administrative tasks
Employee management tools can automate everyday HR tasks, such as calculating payroll and tracking employee productivity. With a range of additional features, such as offline monitoring, time-only monitoring, and real-time session views, employee monitoring systems save managers time and reduce micromanagement. Employees also benefit from being off the shoulders of their supervisors.
Negative aspects
1. Employee Privacy Concerns
The rationale for privacy, surveillance, and wiretapping laws are to protect everyone’s privacy rights. Employees are concerned that electronic surveillance tools are an invasion of their privacy. And to some extent, they are not wrong. However, it depends on how you, as an employer, handle employee surveillance.
In some countries, employers must follow stringent surveillance laws. Unfortunately, this is not the case in some countries, and there are loopholes in these laws that work in the employer’s favor.
2. Potential to undermine trust
Employees may feel that you are questioning their trustworthiness and loyalty, even if they have known them for a long time, leading to a toxic work environment, low morale, and increased turnover.
This problem can be solved by creating a standard company policy that does not target specific individuals. All employees, from apprentices to junior and senior managers, are monitored against HR monitoring standards.
Inform employees that monitoring is underway to
- Improve productivity.
- Set accountability standards.
- Improve management.
- Facilitate the claims process.
Legal issues
It’s important to control computer use so employees can focus on their work.
However, there are always limits.
Ensure the workplace surveillance system you use to track employees is considered legal under your state’s laws.
In some areas, employee monitoring is required by law, while in others, such as Delaware, there are laws that prohibit monitoring employees without their consent.
Conclusion
For many companies, an employee monitoring system is a logical solution to the problem of remote work while maintaining the integrity and quality of products and services. With a managed service provider and remote monitoring and management software, you can monitor your employees from anywhere, ensure they have what they need to do their jobs, and provide expert IT support when problems arise. Monitoring is another tool that can be used when working from home.
Author Bio
Sarah Noah Liam is a 28-year-old Software Management person who enjoys programming, employee monitor software free, and screen recording. She has a post-graduate degree in Computer science. She was raised in a happy family home with two loving parents.
