What are the Benefits and Drawbacks of Employee Computer Monitoring Software?
Many companies turn to employee monitoring software after learning about its benefits, whereas others worry about the potential drawbacks. It is important to carefully evaluate both the benefits and drawbacks of employee monitoring software before deciding whether it is right for your organization.
For example, while using employee monitoring software has many benefits, such as increased productivity, security, and teamwork, there are also some drawbacks, such as feelings of mistrust and possible legal implications.
Read below as we compare these benefits and drawbacks in more detail.
Employee Monitoring Overview
Employee monitoring is a way for employers to monitor employee activity data in order to maximize the productivity of individual employees.
Monitoring employees’ work progress has the potential to boost employee motivation, reduce bottlenecks, and increase profits.
Implementing employee monitoring software like Wolfeye is the most effective way to monitor your employees. Wolfeye includes a wide variety of features that facilitate monitoring, such as automated screenshots, live viewing, visited website lists, and more. With the use of these solutions, companies can improve their business processes by automatically analyzing data and receiving real-time monitoring and reporting.
Advantages of Employee Monitoring Software
Monitoring software has a number of major advantages that are beneficial to both your firm and your workforce.
Higher Productivity
Monitoring your employees can help them become more productive. One study that examined the use of IT monitoring tools found that employees did a better job when they knew their supervisors were monitoring them.
Well-designed incentive programs can also encourage employees to improve their performance by serving as a source of motivation. When you have more information about your employees’ performance, you can compensate them more fairly when they go the extra mile or provide better results.
Improved Collaboration
Employee monitoring provides insight into the activities of employees throughout their workdays, including their collaborative efforts. Using this data, you can build stronger teams that perform better as a whole.
You can also get a better understanding of your employees’ skills, allowing you to distribute tasks in a way that plays to their strengths and minimizes their shortcomings. This results in teams that are more balanced and capable of generating superior work at a faster rate.
Improved Safety Measures
Lastly, an employee monitoring system can help you improve your security and keep your employees safe. Your employees and the personal information they handle are susceptible to external threats.
A monitoring tool can help you detect dangers that employees might overlook, receive notifications when unauthorized users access sensitive information, and identify various forms of suspicious or dangerous activity from both inside and outside your organization.
Similarly, employee monitoring software can also help you find out whether any of your employees have been acting inappropriately.
Examples of such actions include threatening or harassing other workers or customers, being intoxicated on the job, or engaging in other practices that compromise workplace safety.
Disadvantages to Employee Monitoring
While it is possible to implement employee monitoring successfully, there are a few drawbacks to consider:
Feelings of Mistrust
Monitoring employees raises ethical concerns, particularly in light of the impact on employee morale. Your employees might feel as though you are breaching their privacy or that you don’t have confidence in them. This might lead to feelings of animosity and a decline in employee morale.
Disengaged team members are not only less productive, but they are also more inclined to quit your company. Low retention rates hurt profits, strain the surviving staff, and give your organization a bad reputation.
Time/Resource Cost
Employee monitoring is an expensive and time-consuming process. Finding the right monitoring tools, developing a new policy, and putting them into action in your business all require extensive research.
Even after the system is up and running, you still need to fine-tune your tracking methods and management for optimal results. Additionally, you will be required to sort through all of the information that you gather, particularly if you intend to use it to improve your business operations.
Employee monitoring can be a drain on resources, making it difficult to focus on other important duties or projects. Your workflow might undergo a permanent change, depending on the tools you employ and the degree to which you are involved in the process.
Although it might be beneficial in the long run, there is no way to totally escape the costs associated with monitoring employees.
Legal Consequences
When you decide to monitor your employees, you expose yourself to a certain degree of legal risks. The ECPA, or the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, gives companies the right to monitor their employees’ use of company-issued devices.
Although the ECPA is one law governing workplace monitoring, other state laws may be much more restrictive. You must ensure compliance with all federal, state, and local monitoring laws before implementing any monitoring solutions.
How to Minimize Monitoring Disadvantages
Here are a few tips to minimize the disadvantages that come with employee monitoring:
Draft a Policy: Make sure that your monitoring policy includes a comprehensive explanation of the devices and activities that are being monitored.
Establish Employee Monitoring Agreements: Make sure your employees understand and agree to your policies by having them sign an agreement.
Specify Standards: Be sure to clarify your expectations regarding behavior and work ethic. For instance, make it clear to employees that it is against corporate policy to share sensitive company information with third parties.
Familiarize Yourself with Monitoring Laws: Make sure you follow the laws that are specific to your state. For any inquiries, consult a lawyer specializing in corporate law.
Monitor Employees for Business Purposes: Ensure that you are monitoring the activities of your employees only for business purposes.
Avoid Selective Monitoring: You should maintain the same level of monitoring for all of your employees so that no member of the team feels singled out.
Conclusion
Before you decide to implement an employee monitoring software, be sure to consider both the advantages and drawbacks that come with it. This way, you can be prepared to minimize any potential drawbacks. If you aren’t cautious, monitoring could backfire and do the reverse of what you intended.