Employee Monitoring: Pros and Cons You Need to Consider

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Employee monitoring has been around for quite some time. It allows managers to gain insights into what their employees are doing. It also helps them ensure that people are working on what they are supposed to be working on.

And with technology in the field becoming more prevalent, more and more companies are considering implementing screen monitoring software as part of their processes. Nonetheless, there are privacy concerns. Therefore, some business leaders are still on the fence about whether monitoring what their employees are doing during their productive time is a good choice.

To help you figure out whether you should track your employees’ time and utilize the solutions available today, let’s go over some of the most important pros and cons. This will shed light on the best choice in your situation.

The Pros of Employee Monitoring

First, let’s look at some of the main benefits of employee monitoring. Consider these when deciding whether it’s right for you.

Increased Productivity

The single biggest advantage of using employee monitoring solutions is the ability to consistently increase your team’s productivity. By tracking what your employees are doing, you gain multiple ways to make sure people are working on what’s relevant. This will also help you to see whether they are using the best approaches for various tasks.

You can ensure that your employees don’t waste time on unproductive activities. Naturally, you wan them to use their productive time on things that create the most value for the company. When you notice that someone isn’t structuring their time effectively, you can help them understand what aspects of their responsibilities are the most important. You can let them know what they should prioritize. Most employees will appreciate this type of constructive criticism.

At the same time, you can identify the best performers. Use their processes as a benchmark for everyone else, asking them to share their approach so that others can replicate it.

Cost-Effectiveness

As a business, you need your employees to perform at their best to maximize the value that they create. Therefore, companies that want to maximize the money they are investing in their workforce can benefit from setting up a way to track how employees are spending their time.

In the end, each hour an employee spends at work costs a company money. And when managing a large team, the payroll can become one a company’s key expenses. Because of that, you need to ensure that people are creating value while at work. You want to make sure that your company will continue moving in the right direction.

Having a time tracking tool is a great way to control how employees spend their time. At the same time, this method of employee monitoring can help you stay in contact with employees. You will be able to provide them with more constructive feedback about what they might change to be more effective.

Better Planning for Projects

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A big part of the successful execution of a plan is making accurate estimates about how much time and resources different projects might take. But for that to happen, you need to have historical data about your team’s performance. You can use this data to gauge how much time to allocate to future tasks.

The good thing about using time tracking solutions is that you can collect a lot of data that will be quite useful in the future. In addition, you can get more granular. In other words, you can see how much time each task might take. This will help you to allocate portions of the workload to different team members accordingly.

The Cons of Employee Monitoring

Now, let’s look at some of the cons of employee monitoring you should be aware of.

Trust Erosion

The biggest drawback of using employee monitoring solutions is that it can result in less trust between the employee and the employer.

However, the key to avoiding that is being transparent about why the company chooses to track time. It’s not just to keep tabs on the employee. Nor is it about micromanagement. Rather its purpose is to help both management and employees better understand how to approach tasks more effectively and get the most from employees’ time.

Time Cost

Another possible drawback is that monitoring what employees are doing can take time.

However, the time you invest in understanding employee behaviors is time you spend on potentially improving how efficiently they work. This is always a great thing to focus on. Moreover, the amount of time you invest is really up to you.

The mere fact that they know their time is being tracked will provide your employees with more motivation. What’s more, employee monitoring will give you access to data whenever you need it.

Is Employee Monitoring Right for Your Business?

Employee monitoring can be a great way to provide a boost for your business. At the same time, however, some are hesitant about whether it’s the right choice for their business.

The pros and cons above should make it clear that in most cases, employee monitoring can deliver great results. You should strongly consider it.