You’re thinking about buying a monitoring app to boost your employees’ productivity. But do you know some of your employees already think you’re having a monitoring app to track their activities?
According to the latest survey from Clutch, 21% of respondents believe that their companies use employee monitoring software to track their activities.
Clutch Survey Report on Employee Monitoring
The majority of businesses are mandatorily/voluntarily offering their employees an option to work from home amid the coronavirus pandemic. But not all employees offer the same productivity while they’re working from home.
In fact, 45% of employees are more productive working at the office.
So employers are ramping up their efforts to monitor their employees’ productivity. This has resulted in an increased demand for employee monitoring software over the past few months.
However, monitoring your employees’ behavior can backfire. So you should know the pros and cons of employee monitoring.
Following is what the Cluth survey noted:
Pros of Employee Monitoring
72% of respondents say monitoring software apps don’t affect their productivity.
So having an employee monitoring app can be a good way to understand your employees’ workday. You will know how your employees spend their mornings, what tasks take too long, and what tasks kill their productivity. As a result, you’ll be in a better position to assign them tasks strategically to boost their productivity.
Also, an employee monitoring software can help your new employees adjust to the workload.
Young people dominate the workplace now. And only 22% of young employees (18-34 years) are bothered by their companies having access to personal information and activities from their work computers.
Having an employee monitoring app can help your employee become savvier about using work devices appropriately.
Cons of Employee Monitoring
Having employee monitoring software can erode your employees’ trust in your small business.
Only 10% of employees, as the survey states, would have more trust in their company if the company uses monitoring software to track their work.
What more, 49% of employees have accepted that their companies don’t use monitoring software.
So if you want to start using monitoring software, you have to contend with more than half of your employees who are not familiar with the software.
In a nutshell, employee monitoring can help boost your employees’ productivity. But such software can also erode their trust in your business.
Seamus Roddy, content marketer, Clutch, wrote, “Employee tracking can be a useful tool to hold workers accountable and motivate them to produce, but it may also make employees suspicious and uncomfortable at work. Businesses should remember the pros and cons of employee monitoring software,”
“By weighing these pros and cons, companies can determine if employee monitoring software is right for their business,” He added.
Striking a Fine Balance
If you want to track your employees’ work without using employee monitoring software, you can use these five strategies:
- Encourage your employees to use checklists, productivity tools such as Asana, and time management exercises
- Make a habit of periodically checking your employees’ work
- Ask about your employees’ workday (what they do in the first half and second half of the day)
- Reward your employees who exhibit better time management during the workday
- Review your employees’ work-in-progress from time to time
Striking a fine balance is the key here. You don’t want to make your employees feel that they are being monitored. And at the same time, you don’t want them to squander their time on non-productive things.
About the Survey
Clutch conducted the survey, including 400 full-time workers. The survey represented employees from the South, the Midwest, the West, and the Northeast regions of the US. 43% of respondents were female, 44% were male, and 14% declined to answer.
Click here to know more about the survey.
Image: Depositphotos.com
This article, "21% of Employees Think You’re Using Monitoring Software on Them" was first published on Small Business Trends
August 16, 2020 at 09:23AM
via https//www.brucedayne.com/
Sandeep Rathore, Khareem Sudlow
