Monitor for Working from Home
Over or underpaid employees can be detrimental to a business’s success. And this risk substantially increases when teams switch to a remote setting. After all, how do managers ensure that employees are working in accordance to their logged hours?
Fortunately, employee monitoring software makes this easy to do. This software allows managers to remotely track employees’ web and computer activities, which can help them identify any discrepancies in employees’ working hours.
Read below to find out more about how employee monitoring software can work as an essential tool for remote employee monitoring.
Why Monitor Work from Home Employees
Before you decide to implement a remote monitoring tool, it’s important to consider the reasons why you should monitor remote employees. This can also help you determine your company’s specific requirements.
Ensuring Accountability
The increased flexibility and lax monitoring that is inherent to remote work settings tend to make employees irresponsible when it comes to maintaining a standard of work. One major benefit of remote monitoring is that it allows you to hold workers accountable by mimicking the amount of monitoring in traditional workplaces.
Employees who are aware that they are being monitored take greater responsibility for their work, and employers also gain insight into the amount of work done by remote workers. This helps both parties avoid any long-term issues that may occur down the road.
Providing Rewards and Incentives
It’s not unheard of for some workers to be highly regarded while others go unappreciated. Lack of recognition may seem harmless, but it’s incredibly dangerous as it can cause businesses to lose hard-working employees.
The risk of underappreciation is more prevalent in remote settings. Despite being punctual with tasks and doing excellent work, many remote employees go unrecognized, simply because the nature of their jobs makes it difficult to monitor their performance.
Remote employee monitoring makes it easier to track productivity and identify high performers. In this way, managers can recognize the hard work and reward employees accordingly. This will lead to a rise in employee motivation, which in turn will improve their performance.
Prevent Burnout
Many businesses and organizations assign very few responsibilities to specific employees. On the other hand, some people end up carrying the brunt of the workload. This uneven distribution of the workload can be detrimental to your employee’s emotional and physical well-being, resulting in severe burnout.
The best way to solve this problem is by consistently monitoring your remote employees. With top-tier monitoring tools like Wolfeye, managers can easily identify which employees may be struggling. Once you have a sense of which employee is putting in excessive hours, you can transfer some of their workload to other employees.
Streamline Processes
Another potential advantage of remote monitoring is that it gives organizations the ability to have a better understanding of business activities and identify which system adjustments are essential.
Through remote monitoring, firms can learn which departments are performing well, which are struggling, and how much time employees typically lose on a daily basis. Furthermore, it can reveal which resources are being used effectively and which ones are not.
Using this information, the relevant higher-ups can then make modifications to operations and further streamline business processes.
How to Use Monitoring Software for Work from Home Employees
Now that we’ve outlined all the benefits that effective monitoring software like Wolfeye has to offer, let’s talk about how you can use this software to efficiently manage and monitor your remote workforce.
Clarify Expectations
Unclear or inconsistent expectations can really hurt your employees’ workflow. A lot of supervisors aren’t good at giving their employees specific due dates. When this happens, it’s a major headache for businesses and their remote employees alike.
While the management is counting on the work to be submitted, the remote workers have no way to meet this deadline due to poor time management planning.
There is a variety of employee monitoring software that can help you effortlessly set up tasks and due dates. For example, businesses can remotely post a project, define its requirements, and delegate tasks to employees.
Wherever you are in the workflow, this software will keep you in contact with your team and provide you with frequent updates on their progress.
Doing so will save you the time and effort of waiting for work to come rolling in. Instead, you can monitor staff output, establish clear lines of communication, and prompt them to complete their work by the due date.
Set KPIs
To get the most out of your employee monitoring software, it is important to customize it to collect data on the exact KPIs required to achieve your business’s goals. When establishing KPIs, ensure that your indicators are:
Specific
Define clear, measurable KPIs instead of generalized goals. Instead of aiming for the moon with a vague goal like “boost revenue,” try something more targeted like “5% rise in monthly sales revenue.”
Realistic
Take note of your resources and assets to make sure that your KPIs are reasonable and achievable. For instance, before establishing a goal for the amount of projects that employees should finish each month, take into account their present workload and capacity.
Time-Bound
Set specific end dates for KPI. For example, consider a KPI like “submit the report by the end of February” that mandates the conclusion of a task within a particular timeframe.
Consistent Feedback
If you want your employees to know where they stand in terms of performance, you should give them feedback often rather than just during their annual review. In this way, your employees will be able to determine exactly where they are falling short and how to fix the problem.
Many remote employee monitoring software allow managers to assess their employees’ performance in real-time. This helps managers provide objective, constructive feedback. It also provides them with evidence to back up their feedback and suggestions so employees can get a better grasp of specific requirements.
Track Attendance
Employee monitoring software can be a great alternative to manual hour logging and the mountains of emails sent to HR by workers requesting time off.
It can undoubtedly be a real pain for human resources departments to keep track of every employee’s daily attendance. This is especially true in the case of a large team that includes both in-office and remote workers.
If your employees frequently report inconsistencies in their attendance, you may want to consider investing in monitoring software. Using this software could also help your HR department deal with data overload.
Remote employee monitoring software is crucial for increasing efficiency and production in any team, no matter how small or distant. Whether they’re physically there or not, this software allows employees to effortlessly log in and out of work.
The time tracking features of this software are highly customizable, making it easy for your remote workers to request time off with just a few clicks. This eliminates the need to keep track of emails and reduces paperwork. The records will be updated if your employees submit a leave request and the HR department approves it.
Effective monitoring software also logs the number of extra hours employees have worked, which managers can then factor in at the time of compensation or appraisal.
Web/App Monitoring
In the absence of manual monitoring, remote employees have access to a whole host of websites and applications to distract them from carrying out important tasks. In such cases, it becomes important for a company to track employees’ web and app activities.
Fortunately, instead of having to question your staff members one-on-one, you can use remote employee monitoring software to perform precise monitoring.
Nowadays, it’s easy to find employee tracking software like Wolfeye that provides managers periodic updates about how much time their employees spend on various apps, documents, and websites.
This software even provides data on your employees’ idle time so managers can obtain a complete picture of their employees’ activities.
Keeping track of this data can help you understand why your employees may be falling short of deadlines. It can also help provide workers some leeway for when they can meet deadlines despite catering to personal matters.
Risks of Implementing Employee Monitoring Software
Implementing good remote monitoring software can be a game-changer in terms of productivity, but it doesn’t come without its risks. Employers need to be aware of these potential risks so they can address them in time. Let’s talk about some of the most common risks associated with implementing employee monitoring software.
Excessive Monitoring
As the business implements employee monitoring, it’s normal for managers to feel the need to “crackdown” on remote employees and have everyone work as per the company’s requirements.
However, it’s important to remember that excessive monitoring is like a plague that can spread feelings of resentment and mistrust in your remote workforce. Additionally, being monitored in their own home can make many remote workers feel stressed and anxious.
This can quickly deteriorate the sense of trust and unity that workers have at work. It also marks a shift away from caring about employees as people and toward treating them more like a commodity, with a focus on how many hours they put in at the office rather than the results they produce.
Unfortunately, in the long term, this can negatively impact employee satisfaction and morale.
Toxic Work Culture
As stated above, remote employee monitoring, when used inappropriately, can cause severe mistrust and resentment. Such feelings among employees can give rise to a toxic work culture that hinders productivity.
The only companies that are able to reap the benefits of remote monitoring software are those that still maintain the essential trust that a healthy work culture requires.
When used correctly, monitoring can motivate employees in the form of daily check-ins and increased participation. These companies also provide their employees plenty of leeway in terms of their work hours and only assess productivity on the basis of results.
However, even with such freedom and leeway, it is important to strike a balance. This is why it’s critical for managers to provide a great deal of clarity in their expectations and to hold their employees accountable.
Transparency
When management’s policies and procedures regarding employee monitoring are unclear, it can cause skepticism of their actions.
A successful remote work setting requires mutual trust. If employees do not trust their employers, they will lose interest in their work and may even seek employment elsewhere.
Being transparent and open during implementation helps employees understand why they are being monitored and how the data is being used.
Open communication and trust are also hallmarks of a supportive work environment that prioritizes employees’ emotional and psychological well-being.
Legality
Employers in the United States typically have the legal authority to monitor their employees’ online activities on company-owned computers while they are on the clock. This includes using social media, sending and receiving emails, and any communications on instant messaging platforms.
However, different countries have different legal requirements. Every jurisdiction has its own unique set of laws and regulations that employers must follow when it comes to employee privacy, data security, and other compliance requirements.
Due to the ever-changing nature of employment and privacy laws, it is highly recommended to seek the advice of attorneys who specialize in your company’s industry and jurisdiction before making decisions.
Furthermore, laws concerning employee monitoring also vary by state within the United States. Employers in Connecticut and Delaware, for instance, can legally monitor their workers’ online activities and e-mails provided that they provide advance notice.
Make sure to check the regulations in your jurisdiction about monitoring remote employees with an attorney.
Recent developments in workplace privacy legislation have placed an emphasis on openness, safety, and ethical data collection practices.
Take the case of the 2021 New York Civil Rights Law Amendment which mandated that employers in New York provide workers advance notice before monitoring their internet, phone, or email use.
Conclusion
While it’s true that the vast majority of workers prefer to work from home, this may complicate matters for businesses, who struggle to monitor productivity in such settings. Fortunately, implementing employee monitoring software can make this job easier for businesses.