How Can Employee Monitoring Be Helpful

We all know that in the corporate world it's easy to clock in daily from 9 am to 5 pm and not finish work around that time. As the face of technology is evolving, with the use of computers, it’s easy to just stare at your screen, pretending to get things done. Nowadays, digital companies' work is made easier because everything is now screen-based. You multitask your way through by just looking at your Facebook and Powerpoint at the same time while your manager passes you by, but with the power of technology – companies can now monitor your day-to-day tasks and have no way to hide them. 

Part 1. Should The Employer Track Device Activity?

Here, we’ll further discuss how you can monitor your employees. Many companies, especially office based, have been in the day-to-day scheme of monitoring their employees not only to keep them concentrated when working but also to monitor their day-to-day tasks. This is also common for remote workers as they monitor their employees to make sure that they are doing their daily tasks at work. Here we introduce your the best employee monitoring software SpyX. It can be used to track target phone without app installation, no jailbreak. SpyX enables to track videos, photos, emails, notes, social media chats, etc. And the whole process is very simple. Just follow the steps:

Step 1. Sign up free with valid email.

Step 2. Choose suitable plan.

Step 3. Bind target phone with SpyX.

Step 4. Login to Control Dashboard to view the data.

Part 2. How Can Employee Monitoring Be Helpful

Employers should take extra precautions for each of their employee’s day-to-day tasks during working hours. Most companies use employee tracking software to check each employee’s productivity. Each of these has pros and cons. It’s a pro because it can increase the productivity of employees but the cons of course can lead to micromanaging the employees. 

Let’s discuss the top 7 reasons why employee monitoring can be helpful in the workplace.

Here you can determine the most time of the employees' productivity. You can check which best times are they the busiest or they’re acting suspicious, assessing their performance and work behavior on their daily tasks every day. This is an open opportunity to help the employee with what they should be improving on and how they can be more efficient in the workplace. 

1. Evaluate Your Employees’ Productivity

Ever wondered how productive your employees are while at work? How about when you have employees working remotely? 

2. Protect Company’s Assets

Each employee is a company investment and therefore an asset. But of course, not all assets can provide a return on investment from each employee. There might be some employees that can put your company at risk if they’re not doing the right thing and their work could put the company at risk because of their misbehavior. 

3. Get Access To More Flexible Working Environment

This is a better setup when working remotely. This means that an employee can be more efficient in their place instead of inside the workplace. It's also more convenient for them in terms of time and driving hours from work to home and vice versa meaning it gives more energy for the employee to do better because of their working environment. 

4. Help Separate Employees’ Personal Life From Work Life 

If employees can focus on their jobs rather than mixing personal life with the workplace, it could give more health and personal concerns plus it could be a work culture of what every employee has been doing and been passed on to new employees. This can also benefit you and the employee as you can closely monitor them while working and check for any personal concerns that could be raised whether be health or family concerns. 

5. Be Safe From Imprisonment And Fines

Data privacy or invading someone’s privacy is illegal, but as long as it’s for your business and the protection of your business that’s where it’s legal and safe to do so. With the help of monitoring employees, it can save your company from any potential harm and risks as it can lead to major setbacks which the company did not sign up for. With this solution, you can protect your employee plus the company once seen and raised as soon as possible. 

6. Collect Real Evidence To Support The Case In Annual Salary Raise

Got plans to give out bonuses and salary increases for next year? Well, with the help of a monitoring device it can add value to the employee’s productivity. It can be a basis on how well the employee is without being supervised and once audited and it can be considered as proof that they deserve such bonuses and increase. 

7. Get Effective Feedback From The Manager

For evaluating employees and their performance, with the right tools, actually concrete examples on how to improve their productivity and how they can increase they're being efficiency to the company. Alongside that, it’s easy to determine their efficiency before and after the evaluations. 

Part 3. Concerns for Employee Monitoring Software

There are many ways of monitoring and analytics tools to help employees be more efficient and improve business development. Introducing software data to employees may raise some concerns and become an issue in terms of the process inside the work culture. 

1. May Violate Employees’ Personal Data 

As surveillance technologies have been evolving, the privacy of personal information is a big problem for employees. Workers who aren’t used to being monitored and being switched to work home from the base may be a drastic change for employees. They'll be curious about what the company is tracking from start to end during their working hours and how much of their personal information the program would capture. 

2. Intrusion In Employees’ Privacy

Whenever employees hear “computer activity monitoring” all eyebrows are raised along with negative comments and reactions since they’re worried about their privacy or even the monitoring app might endanger their privacy. Questions employees usually ask are what is being tracked, why and in what way are they being tracked and what’s not being tracked, the intent of tracking them, and so on. As the boss, giving the employees assurance that the intent or purpose of such is to just monitor their efficiency with the right tools and provide positive criticism, and mentioning the choices and the process with that. 

3. Creates Distrust Among Employees

Having a surveillance monitor might give the employee an impression that the company doesn’t trust them at all. That’s why when being informed about the monitoring tool, might cause a negative impact that the company doesn’t trust the employees. Providing monitoring tools doesn’t mean you don’t trust the employee but it’s just an extra precaution for the ones who aren’t being loyal to the company. Also, this could increase the morale of the employees and focus on being efficient inside the workplace rather than doing personal errands on the side. 

4. Can Cause Legal Issues

If you’re not being careful with the rules and legal regulations in the workplace, this could create an issue. As long as there’s a contract between the employer and employee about the terms and conditions of the monitoring tools used and managing information in line with the government regulations and obtained fairly and justifiably, then there won’t be any problem with that. It can cause legal issues once the company did not follow the protocol and other inside jobs in the workplace. 

Part 4. Does employee monitoring increase productivity?

Yes, with the help of employee monitoring apps or tools, this could increase the productivity of the employee. Because they’ll be more focused to do their work the right way and at the same time help them improve with the files and reports of their products every month, alongside them protecting them for any issue or concern that arises as there's proof of monitoring conducted. 

Part 5. Will Employee Monitoring Help Improve the Efficiency?

Employees know and are aware that they are being monitored, they’ll be extra conscious and pay full attention to their day-to-day tasks and of course, help their colleagues to increase their productivity and save them from trouble. This gives the company as well as being the ability to save more money and be able to earn more due to the employee’s good productivity. 

Part 6. Pros of Employee Monitoring

1. Increase Security

Now that there’s an implementation that’s being done - your company is now increasing its security to avoid information breaches from competitors and malware attacks. Employers can now access their employees' tasks and daily records plus actions. If any employees broke the company rules then that’s the time that they will face charges and legal terms if needed. Plus this could also help identify security issues and decrease inside and outside security threats. 

2. It helps to track the performance of each employee

This might be a challenge if you’re in a big company. That's why monitoring employees comes in handy. The power of employee monitoring can save more time by just viewing their work-related activities, attendance, and their dedication — which can lead to quick employee performance. 

3. Increase in Work Performance

Super competitive employees don’t take in between breaks or lunchtime just to focus on being productive and increase their chances of being promoted or having their bonus pay. 

4. Reduces non-work-related activities

Once employees are aware that they are being monitored, they’ll be reduced on their screen interactions on their side such as opening their social media accounts and many more. 

5. Regulate employees’ misconduct

Employers can now easily track employees who are misbehaving during their working hours and can use proof of what they were doing during their hours. 

6. Protects the company’s information

With the help of employee monitoring, it keeps a record of employees’ activities on their devices. It can also track their geo-location and capture images in the area. It also likewise can get access to their text messages, files, and documents, including the deleted ones. So if your employee secretly sends a confidential file outside work, it’s easy to be tracked and take action after. Thus this is protecting the company’s privacy and data. 

7. Cost-effective

Instead of being on the traditional side, the monitoring apps - can save you more time and money too. Because there is no need to overhire people and can easily be tracked depending on which employee to track and audit. 

Part 7. Cons of Employee Monitoring

1. Violation of Privacy

When employees use company computers and devices, they might end up feeling that you are violating their privacy. Employers can access every task that they perform, text messages, or files that they send. That’s why they can sense these as cons of employee monitoring.

2. Decrease in Productivity

Since employees are aware that they are being monitored. There is a high chance that they are being anxious and decrease their productivity because they’re too distracted that they are being watched on every move that they make. 

3. Legal Issues

Be careful in choosing the employee monitoring app as some apps are illegal, so you should get the best one that’s safe and within the breach of goals. 

4. Invasion of Personal Life

If the employee mixes the company devices at home and is being used for personal purposes then that means that your employer can see and get access to your transactions. That is why it’s best to advise to now put any personal information related to a company-owned device to avoid personal information breach.

Part 8. Employee Monitoring Software

You can use employee monitoring software to track employees' daily tasks and activities to determine and evaluate their performance. It controls all user behavior on smartphones, blogs, emails, networks, and files at work. This includes any downloads from third parties, data failure protection, and many more to simple employee surveillance.

Features of Employee Monitoring Software

Here are some features of employee monitoring software:

1. Real-time Employee Tracking:

You can track your employees through many devices including web apps, keystrokes, emails, and networks in use. 

2. User Behavior Analytics:

The software contains Intelligent Behavior Analysis. It analyzes any malicious behavior and deviations that signify a departure from the usual behavior baseline. 

3. Insider Threat Detection:

Get notified right away if an employee happens to be engaging in a harmful way to the company. Any transactions can be automatically blocked, lockout the user, and take remote device control. 

4. Policies and Rules Engine:

You can quickly describe and regulate your policies with the company through the app and what it can do for you to help you manage and monitor your employees. 

5. Productivity Optimization:

Monitoring apps can provide you with their practical vs their idle time. That way it’s easy to determine and investigate why their idle time is bigger than their productive time, and be able to find ways how to further increase their productivity. 

6. Audit and Forensic:

It’s easy to now audit employees as monitoring apps can help record which includes video logging, audio recordings, session recordings, employee operations, and many more. They have a large amount of forensic data to help you pinpoint the root of an insider attack. 

7. Third-Party Vendor Management:

Monitoring apps provide you leverage and agreements like their terms and conditions to help you lower the risks of cyberattacks. 

8. Compliance Management:

Monitoring apps can help you build and operate schedule-based rules for various enforcement needs, which include audit trails, unauthorized logins, preventing unencrypted file transfers, and many more. 

Part 9. Top 10 Best Employee Monitoring Software

There are many various monitoring apps, but here are some best monitoring apps in the market. They all have their edge, but here are the best apps that employers use and have great reviews. You can also check their legal terms, privacy, and policy agreements before you install any software to avoid any third-party malicious malware and data privacy breaches. 

1.Teramind
2. EmpMonitor
3. Time Doctor
4. Veriato Cerebral
5. ActivTrak
6. Controlio
7. Hubstaff
8. InterGuard
9. StaffCop Enterprise
10. VeriClock

Part 10. Conclusion

Employee monitoring is useful for big companies and if they think that they don’t trust the employees working enough. Employee monitoring apps can be helpful in so many ways. However, applying monitoring apps can depend on the goal that you want but it also has its pros and cons. Before getting any employee monitoring apps, make sure you know what you’re getting into for your company and have fine restrictions in terms of employee policies for pure company use purposes. 

FAQs

Q1. What are the benefits of employee monitoring?

Monitoring can make a worker more productive on the job by cutting down on the number of mistakes made while also allowing for greater, efficient use of one's time. In addition, the practice could make the workplace safer. Employers more easily recognize an employee's positive abilities through monitoring.

Q2. Why is it important to monitor employees performance?

Measuring employee performance helps calibrate those goals by providing insight into where someone is doing well and could be stretched and areas that are not a strength yet. Based on performance feedback, self-reflection, and business needs, employees should set their own goals  not the manager or the company.

Q3. What are the purposes of monitoring?

Monitoring allows results, processes and experiences to be documented and used as a basis to steer decision-making and learning processes. Monitoring is checking progress against plans. The data acquired through monitoring is used for evaluation.

Q4. Does employee monitoring increases productivity?

A Stanford study of 16,000 workers over a nine-month period showed a performance increase of 13% A survey by ConnectSolutions showed an increase of 77% in productivity for remote workers. Of those surveyed, 30% indicated they do more work in less time when remote while 24% doing more work during their work hours.

Q5. How does workplace monitoring affect workers?

Using unproportionally invasive workplace surveillance methods to track employee activity is a surefire way to introduce negative effects such as decreased employee morale, work-related stress, and counterproductive work behaviors.