If you’re an employer, you must have observed your employees receiving phone calls from their family or friends during office hours. In other instances, you must have also seen them surfing the web while on the job.
It goes without saying that if your employees’ typical working day involves the constant use of technology such as a computer or mobile phone, they will be more likely to carry out personal matters using these electronic devices without giving a second thought to their actions.
What would be more suitable for them is to think twice because there’s a high chance that an employer might be monitoring all of their activities, including phone calls, during working hours. They can easily set up a call tracker app on their employees’ cellphones to keep tabs on their calls.
Apart from phone calls, employers can also monitor their employee’s emails, text messages, web browsing history as well as social media usage. Employees should have zero expectation of maintaining privacy at work because their every action can be monitored by the management.
Below, we have listed down a few ways management of the company can keep tabs on its employees during office hours. Let’s take a look at them.
The company can monitor all the activities performed on the company-owned electronic device such as a computer. The employer has all the right to monitor the complete computer usage that includes the following:
Besides computer usage, the company can also monitor its employees both incoming and outgoing emails and text messages. In fact, they can track all their communication during office hours. Whether employees communicate with others for personal or work reasons, the employer is allowed to monitor everything.
Some companies use email systems that automatically copy and generate backups of all the emails and messages that pass through. With the help of specialized software such as GPS call tracker, the employer can track your phone location apart from just phone calls.
They can also use keyloggers to record all the keystrokes you have entered during office hours. For instance, if you have written an email and saved it in a draft, the keylogger can also save a copy of the same and help your employers have access to it. Deleting the emails will be futile because the employer already has a copy of it.
You may not believe it but the truth is some employers even pay close attention to your social media activity during office hours. They closely observe all your posts, likes, and tweets on social media. While you may think your social media activity is not a concern for your company, a few examples where some employers went on to fire their employees over social media usage is enough to give you a reality check.
You may not realize but chances are, your employees are secretly spying on your social media activity. Just by installing a monitoring solution on your device, be it a computer or cellphone, they can track all your Facebook or Snapchat activity. Therefore, it is really important to be sensible about what you post on your social media.
Companies can also track your location while you are on a business trip. If you happen to drive a company-owned car or regularly take work-related trips, you need to be extremely careful of your movements because your employer is keeping an eye on every movement while you are out.
Most companies are now using GPS to monitor employees’ whereabouts especially if they travel on a company-owned vehicle. They can gather information about employees’ travel activities such as route, mileage, driving behavior, including speed, and the time spent in and out of the vehicle.
If you think your employer’s monitoring is only restricted to computers and vehicles, you are wrong. They can also monitor your entire cellphone activity, especially if it has been given to you by the company.
If your employer has provided you with a company cellphone, tablet, or laptop, you should expect them to also install a monitoring solution on it so they can track your activity all the time. Sometimes they also track your activity after the work shift ends. So, you need to be careful while using the company-owned mobile device because you can never know if your employer is still keeping an eye on you.
And the monitoring may not only be limited to company-owned mobile devices only. If your company has asked you to bring your own device (BYOD) and allowed you to use your personal device at and for work purposes, even then you need to be careful because chances are, it will also be monitored like other devices.
Your employer can also keep a tab on all your incoming and outgoing phone calls on your mobile device. Whether you are using a company-owned cellphone or your own, you should expect the company to monitor your phone calls while you are at work.
Usually, companies have installed a call tracker app on employees’ devices so they can keep track of all the sent and received phone calls. Monitoring calls help employers know if their employees are talking to their family members or friends during office hours instead of focusing on the job. Also, they can find out if the employees are sharing the company’s confidential data with the competitors on a phone call.
That is why employee monitoring is really essential to companies. It not only helps employers locate the lethargic and incompetent workers but also tell them who can pose some serious threat to the company’s reputation.