It’s not an uncommon occurrence for employees to slack off at work. Whether it’s checking social media, watching videos on the internet, making personal phone calls, or any number of distractions, employees often have their attention diverted away from work. For this reason, among many others, companies may wish to implement a monitoring system to keep tabs on their employees.
However, if you’re an HR manager and your business is thinking about implementing such a system, there are a few important things you need to know first. These range from different benefits that employee monitoring can offer your company, to critical pitfalls that should be avoided.
1. Curb distractions
One good benefit from employee monitoring is to limit distractions. By using monitoring software in employees’ work devices, it’s possible to track what websites they visit, what apps they use, and what they’re spending their time on. This way, you can see what distractions they’re wasting their time on and put a stop to it by both blocking access to these distractions as well as speaking with your employees about it.
2. Train new employees
Whenever a new employee is hired, a lot of time and effort goes into training them and getting them up to speed. However, employee monitoring can significantly improve this process by tracking new hires’ habits and correcting accordingly.
For example, perhaps your monitoring logs are showing that one of your new employees is not following the usual protocol when tackling a certain task. You can look over these logs to see what their habits are like and then guide them towards doing things correctly.
3. Improve on weak areas
Not only is employee monitoring a great tool for training new employees, but it’s also good for helping improve the employees that you already have.
Because employee monitoring tracks the activity and habits of employees, it can also show you what areas they are having the most trouble with. Once these problems have been detected, you can help guide them and give them the support they need to improve.
4. Protect from wrongful dismissal lawsuits
In the event that an employee needs to be let go, the records that can be kept with employee monitoring can come in handy if the former employee decides to sue the company for wrongful dismissal. You can use these records as evidence that your company was in the right.
Not only could having these records help make a lawsuit end in your favor, but it should also help dissuade any such lawsuits from happening at all.
5. Follow the law
Before implementing employee monitoring, it is very important that you make sure it is done according to the law. The last thing you’d want is for your company to get in trouble for overstepping boundaries.
As laws can vary depending on country and state, you will need to look up what laws you need to follow. However, as a general rule, you should inform your employees that you will be monitoring them and have them sign an agreement allowing you to monitor them. Along with this, it is typically illegal to monitor your employees outside of working hours, so you will want to avoid doing so.
Again, while following these guidelines should keep you on the right side of the law in most cases, you should still research the laws in your local jurisdiction because they can vary a great deal. What might be perfectly legal in one country could be a felony in another.
6. Explain the benefits
A lot of people have misgivings about their company monitoring them while they work. In order to ensure a good transition when implementing employee monitoring, it’s important to let your employees know why you’ll be monitoring them, what you’ll be monitoring them for, and how it can benefit not just the company, but them as individuals as well.
If this is done before your company begins monitoring its employees, then it should help to assuage any sort of negative feelings or apprehension that your employees may have about being monitored.
7. Use your resources better
By tracking where time and resources are being spent within the company, it’s possible to better allocate these resources on more important tasks. For example, perhaps you have a group of employees who are working on a project that, while still of use to the company, may not be as important as another task that they could be working on. Once you take note of this, you can direct them towards the more important work that needs to be done.
Bonus. Solve disputes between employees
With employee monitoring software keeping logs of emails and other communication between employees, it’s much easier to solve any disputes that may arise. By having accurate records of what was said to who, it’s much easier to sort out any misunderstandings as well as get the full picture of any sort of conflict in order to make mediating a much simpler process.
About the Author
Yuri Martsinovsky has been working in the security software industry at SoftActivity – computer and employee monitoring software development company – for over 15 years. He covers insider threats, computer monitoring, and other enterprise security topics. To read more posts by Yuri, follow Monitoring and Security Software Blog or company Twitter @SoftActivity.