Whether your workforce is remote, hybrid, or office-first, employee monitoring is an empowering way to improve workforce productivity by providing greater insight into not only when employees are working, but how they are working.
Traditional employee monitoring has historically been associated with surveillance and oversight, which can lead to understandable concerns from employees and companies alike.
Progressive organizations understand that employee monitoring, is merely a collection method for highly influential productivity indicators that contribute to productivity, efficiency, and employee engagement. When used correctly and with transparency, employee monitoring can shed light on people, processes, and technology
In this article, we’ll cover the basics of employee monitoring and give you actionable tips to implement and leverage the data gathered to create a more transparent workplace.
What is Employee Monitoring?
Employee Monitoring refers to the tracking of employee activity data to monitor productivity, prevent data breaches, boost employee engagement and optimize inefficient workflows. Recently, modern employee monitoring tools have shown greater potential for comprehensive workforce analytics and employee productivity coaching opportunities. These modern tools let businesses optimize employee performance, boost employee engagement and reduce process efficiencies. By monitoring and analyzing employee work behavior, organizations can increase workforce productivity and become more profitable.
Employee monitoring and workforce activity data gathered by this method can be analyzed to find trends, patterns and correlations across teams, groups and departments to gain insight into business processes and how to improve them. This activity data includes application use, time spent on unproductive tasks and what time of day each employee is most productive. Employee monitoring gives companies an overall picture of how work is done in and out of the office, putting workforce activity data in context and providing insights for employers and employees alike to boost personal, team and corporate productivity.
When you’re done reading this guide, you’ll be able to determine if employee monitoring is right for your team, which system to choose and how to implement it in your office.
Types of Employee Monitoring
Historic methods of employee monitoring
Change in technology has opened up a wide range of options for employee monitoring in the workplace and in remote locations. Just ten years ago, most employee monitoring had to be done locally in the office. My how times have changed. With this change in the way work is done, companies now have to rethink how and why employee monitoring is implemented and used. We’ll briefly cover some of the historical types of employee monitoring and then jump into a more modern approach.
Internet and Email
These are two mainstays of employee work and therefore employee monitoring.
We know the internet is essential to productivity, as long as it’s used appropriately and efficiently. The idea is to discover how the internet is being used and see if there’s any way to improve its usage by the team.
Although other communication tools have caused email use to decline, understanding email communication and usage can still help with workforce productivity and efficiency.