Olive Yew
Employee monitoring software helps track various aspects of your employees' activities, including working hours, location, and computer usage. It’s beneficial for managing office-based, remote, or hybrid workplaces.
Research shows that 30% to 40% of employees' internet use during work hours is unrelated to work. Activities like online shopping and social media contribute to productivity losses. In the U.S., this non-work-related internet use results in significant annual productivity losses.
As remote work becomes more common, effective employee monitoring is essential for maintaining productivity and security beyond traditional office settings. This article will explore what employee monitoring software is and how it works.
Employee monitoring software provides employers with valuable insights into their employees' activities, whether they are working in the office or remotely. Despite the initial impression, these tools are not intrusive. They collect data on work-related activities while respecting user privacy and avoiding any interference with personal matters.
This software is essential for identifying when productivity levels drop and making necessary adjustments to improve performance. It helps employers understand what strategies work best for their team and how to optimize productivity effectively.
Here are key features you can expect from an employee monitoring platform:
Do you know time tracking software can provide you with a screenshot of the employee’s work activities? With the help of the screenshots, you can analyze if the employees are focusing on their work or not.
For example, you can set the timing to take the screenshot after every 10 minutes. These screenshots are then organized in a gallery for easy review. If you notice that an employee’s screenshots predominantly show non-work-related activities, you can address the issue with them and take appropriate action.
Effective time management is essential for productivity. Your employee monitoring management should include features to track time-ins and time-outs, particularly for hourly workers. This ensures you can monitor working hours and verify that employees meet their contractual obligations.
The solution should also allow you to assign shifts online, with automatic notifications sent to each employee about their scheduled times. Additionally, you should have access to a dashboard that provides an overview of all employees’ working hours, making it easy to spot any irregularities that may require further investigation.
Your platform should enable you to monitor corporate chat communications. You should be able to track who sends and receives messages through corporate accounts. For example, if a chat message contains sensitive information sent to a suspicious recipient, the software should alert you to potential security issues. Chat monitoring helps prevent unauthorized data access and transfers.
The software should provide access to the browsing history on work devices. This feature allows you to ensure that employees are using their time productively and helps detect visits to suspicious sites that could jeopardize your corporate network. Ideally, you should also be able to block specific websites, with employees receiving an error notification if they attempt to access restricted sites, thus protecting against potential data leaks.
An effective employee monitoring program should provide automatic alerts for suspicious activities. For instance, you can configure the system to notify you if an employee attempts to access a blocked site or views an internal page with sensitive information. The system will automatically capture a screenshot as evidence and alert you to take any necessary action.
Monitoring software offers various benefits to employers, including:
Productivity is crucial for every business to reach its goals and boost profits. To enhance performance, monitoring solutions can help you manage the team and provide valuable insights into the workplace. Further, enabling you to refine your strategies for optimal performance.
For example, an Employee tracking solution can monitor the performance and allow you to schedule the tasks during those peak times.
Additionally, it fosters accountability by encouraging employees to stay on task, knowing that their work is being tracked. Even a straightforward time-tracking system can boost accountability without being invasive.
Protecting data from unauthorized access is crucial for every organization. Employee monitoring tools play a key role in preventing data loss and security breaches.
Monitoring software tracks employees' computer activities, providing insights into who accessed specific data and when. It monitors web searches and browsing history, logs keystrokes to identify who downloaded or leaked information, and tracks network access and file movements to see who interacted with particular files.
In essence, employee monitoring tools serve as a vigilant overseer, ensuring that sensitive data is handled properly and securely within your organization.
Time tracking and productivity solutions are essential in many industries like IT, healthcare, finance, and more. With the help of this software, you can track who is not following the regulations and industry standards.
No doubt, the pandemic has increased the prevalence of remote work, making it more important for companies to keep track of their employees. 60% of the companies use the employee monitoring solution to manage their office and remote employees. The system helps to track who accesses the critical files and systems to ensure data is protected. Companies can maintain compliance, safeguard confidential information, and avoid potential fines or legal issues.
Employee monitoring software helps organizations ensure that employees adhere to the terms and conditions of their work contracts.
For example, these tools automatically and accurately record employees’ work hours, ensuring they are paid fairly. They also track employee behavior, such as attendance trends and productivity. This is valuable in resolving disputes and can help prevent potential legal liabilities for employers.
When implementing employee monitoring software, it’s essential to consider the legal and ethical implications. There are regulations in place that guide responsible corporate monitoring, and crossing these boundaries can result in legal trouble or even lower productivity—the exact opposite of your goal.
Let’s explore some key questions about the legality and ethics of employee monitoring tools.
Yes, these management solutions are legal as long as they comply with the data collection laws specific to your region. Workplace regulations generally permit employers to monitor work-related activities within certain limits. For example, employers can track work-related phone calls but are prohibited from recording personal ones. Similarly, work-related email monitoring is allowed, but personal email correspondence remains off-limits.
Employers should provide dedicated work devices for monitoring, as tracking personal devices requires explicit employee consent. Employees have the right to refuse such monitoring without facing any penalties.
Yes, as long as it’s strictly limited to work-related activities. Many monitoring tools include features that could be seen as invasive, like taking automated screenshots or recording every keystroke. Because of this, it's crucial to ensure monitoring is confined to workplace activities only. Monitoring personal activities risks legal issues and damages the trust between you and your employees.
To maintain ethical standards, avoid tracking personal activities, as this can lead to legal issues and erode employee trust. If you implement monitoring software, provide employees with dedicated work devices and inform them that activities on these devices will be monitored.
It’s also important to consider how the data is used. Collected data should only be leveraged to improve workplace productivity—not to invade privacy. Data privacy should be a top priority, with any information gathered is used strictly for work purposes and kept confidential. Sharing it with unauthorized parties is unethical and can undermine trust.
These are the primary considerations when choosing an employee monitoring tool:
Select a tool with a user-friendly interface that's easy to navigate. The employee monitoring system should be easy to install and manage across multiple devices. An interactive dashboard will help you efficiently monitor employee activities and extract valuable insights.
This feature lets you categorize websites and apps based on their relevance to employees' tasks. You can assign specific productivity ratings to each website and app, such as:
Productive
Non-productive
For instance, if your advertising team uses Instagram for running campaigns, you can classify Instagram as a productive tool for that particular team.
Choose a tool that scales effortlessly without compromising speed and performance. It should be able to support additional devices as your company expands, maintaining its efficiency with increased usage. Additionally, ensure the tool integrates smoothly with your existing systems, such as project management, and time-tracking. Seamless integration will enhance the efficiency of data collection and reporting.
Before selecting any particular software review the features of each tool and ensure it matches with your monitoring needs. You can opt for features like screenshot capture, application and website monitoring, reports, and website blocking. Additionally, assess whether the solution offers customization options to tailor it to your organization’s specific requirements.
Consider the pricing of different software options to find a solution that fits your long-term budget. Most monitoring tools charge a fixed monthly or annual fee per device, helping you accurately forecast your ongoing costs. In fact, if you want a cost-effective solution for your business, MaxelTracker is the best fit for you.
In the above blog, we have covered everything you need to about employee productivity management— what is it, how it works, and its features. In fact, we have also highlighted the key factors to consider while choosing the best productivity tracking platform for your business. By following these guidelines, you're more likely to find a solution that will serve you well in the long run.
