7 Ways Employees Benefit from Employee Monitoring

3
4554

Share on LinkedIn

Donuts can have sprinkles, be jelly-filled or plain. This is usually the three criteria we ponder on our way to a weekly employee staff meeting. It’s the highlight, because usually the meeting is filled with fancy deadlines, project updates and awkward manager jokes. These jokes usually trigger an unwanted long yawn. What is the topic of discussion at this employee staff meeting? It’s the long-time talked about corporate strategy on employee monitoring. These last four words might make you choke on your jelly donut.

When someone mentions employee monitoring, the business managers usually shake their heads positively in acknowledgment, and employees usually grow silent. Monitoring is a sticky topic. For businesses, it means streamlining process and improving employee proficiency. But for employees, it most likely leads to thoughts of mistrust, increased stress levels and anger.

Often, managers fail to communicate the benefits of an employee monitoring system to the employee.

This is overlooked, and it can create a negative work environment. The jelly donuts are no longer sufficient enough to boost employee enthusiasm.

What is employee monitoring? Employee monitoring software allows employers to track and record employee work related tasks. A business using these types of software usually track employee attendance hours, tracks performance on projects, visited websites, email exchanges and actively prevents security breaches in ‘real time.’

A functioning employee monitoring system can have great benefits towards the employee. This software helps employees handle their personal tasks without a manager constantly hovering over their shoulders. No one likes a micro-manager.

Internalize these employee benefits.

Employees can evaluate their own personal productivity.

Have you wandered when you’re most productive at work? This type of information can be easily analyzed and recorded in an employee monitoring system. You can actively view and analyze the hours of the day that you are most productive. This process gives you criteria to analyze your personal efficiency and work output. If you’re most productive in the morning, plan your work day to conquer important job tasks in the morning, and save the long meetings for the afternoon.

Employees have access to a more flexible working environment.

Say ‘hello’ to the remote office. In a recent study by Stanford University, a 9-month call center study revealed a 13% increase in employee productivity when working from home. Once a business introduces an effective employee monitoring software, employees have more access to the opportunity to work from home. This results in a reduction of daily commute hours, and employees report being more productive due to a quieter and more comfortable working environment.

Employees receive effective feedback from the manager.

With monitoring software, employees can be provided with real, tangible examples of great performance and areas to improve. This software closes the doors on biased and uninformative ‘bad to outstanding’ criteria questionnaires that are often given during employee annual reviews. Employees can now be reviewed regularly, and change behaviors in the moment, rather than waiting for the yearly review to address concerns. This means no more, “you remember, when you did that one [thing], at that [one] time” improvement strategy. That’s not effective.

Employees are saved from imprisonment and fines.

Employees can be undoubtedly negligent when it comes to data security concerns. They might unlawfully share financial records through email with an outsider without intent, or click a link in a malicious email without knowing. Data security threats are real and increasing rapidly. Many of these actions can result in personal fines. Working with an employee monitoring system can ultimately save your personal bank account, by preventing negligence in these behaviors.

Employees can protect their personal assets.

We often talk about saving the assets of the business, but an employee’s assets are just as much at risk. This risks accelerates when employees use their personal devices for business work. For example, an employee can become a malware victim, when clicking a malicious link in their work email, while accessing the server from their personal computer.

Employees have real examples to support their case in a annual salary raise.

Are you looking for a salary increase this year? A monitoring system can help employees support their case in this endeavor. Use data and analytics to present the case in a tangible and quantifiable way. Show that your overall work productivity increased from one year to the next, translating to the conclusion that you’re an effective worker. Get that raise.

Employees can effectively separate personal life from work life.

As Fortune magazine pointedly states, “checking email after work is bad for your health.” In a recent Worker’s Options Survey, 59% of Americans reported checking their work email outside of working hours.

This leads to an unbalanced work and personal life, leading to “psychological, gastrointestinal, and cardiovascular problems.” Effective monitoring holds employees accountable from taking work outside of the workplace, and encourages them not to do so. A monitoring system can help fortify the separation of work and personal life.

Often, we look at employee monitoring as a solution for the business. This leads employees feeling as if they’re being ‘spied on’ or untrusted. This is not the solution. When implementing an employee monitoring system in your business, use these seven ways to convince your employees that the strategic move is just as beneficial to them.

This post was originally published on IT Security Central and has been reprinted with permission.

Isaac Kohen
Isaac Kohen is VP of R&D at Teramind, a leading, global provider of employee monitoring, insider threat detection, and data loss prevention solutions.

3 COMMENTS

  1. Great explanation, Employee monitoring devices make employees feel untrusted sometimes but if we see the positive side, employee performance improves and his concentration on work.

  2. I think employee monitoring is a suitable method for tracking activity employees by the employer. During the corona pandemic, its works like a medicine to track their employee activity working from home. It also helps the employee to maintain relevancy toward their work. Thanks for such an insightful blog.

  3. Employee monitoring is very essential especially for remote teams. Without knowing how your employees are working your business can never make good progress. In my case, for my small business, I was looking for an affordable solution which could provide me the best service at the lowest price, which is why I chose CloudDesk and since the day I started monitoring my employees I got an increasing progress in their performance. Now I am relax that no matter the location of my employees, I know how they are working and how long they are working.

ADD YOUR COMMENT

Please use comments to add value to the discussion. Maximum one link to an educational blog post or article. We will NOT PUBLISH brief comments like "good post," comments that mainly promote links, or comments with links to companies, products, or services.

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here