What Are the Pros and Cons of Employee Monitoring?

If you are an employer of a company, you must have heard about employee monitoring software. Deploying employee monitoring solutions in an organization has become a thing now. Every company is now considering employee monitoring software to keep an eye on their employees.

Every employer is now looking at the pros and cons of employee monitoring so they can make some decisions regarding monitoring their employees’ activities. It has been observed that most employees and staff workers do not like the idea of being monitored whereas the employers and the boss are very much inclined towards the same idea.

However, if you dig a little deeper and carry out more research, you will find out that not all the employees whose companies are using monitoring solutions are against the idea of being monitored. It is the responsibility of the employers to ensure their employees that they should not feel threatened by monitoring software. That way, both employers and employees can work peacefully and end up happy.

Pros and Cons of Employee Monitoring

Employee monitoring comes with both advantages and disadvantages. In this post, we are going to talk about the pros and cons of employee monitoring so both employers and employees can get an idea of it.

Pros of Employee Monitoring

Here are some of the advantages of employee monitoring:

Increased Productivity

‍Many companies have reported that with the installation of employee monitoring software, they have witnessed a significant amount of increased productivity in their organization. By installing monitoring software, it was found out that the team’s productivity increased by 26% whereas staff workers were 32% more productive.

After the implementation of monitoring software in the companies, there is a huge productivity boost just after a week. This is because employees are aware of the fact that they are being monitored by their employer so they happen to remain more focused on their job and perform tasks dutifully.

Protect the Company’s Data

It has been observed that most data breaches in a company are caused by insiders. Employees can be responsible for most data breaches in a company. Half of the data breaches may be unintentional but they can cost a fortune to the companies.

By deploying employee monitoring software on your employee’s device, you can find out which employees have accessed which files on their computer. You can also find out whether or not they have downloaded any malicious software or apps on their devices.

With employee monitoring tools, you can keep an eye on their emails and private messages to know whether or not they have attempted to or shared the company’s sensitive information with outsiders or competitors.

Evaluate Employee’s Performance

Employee evaluation can take up a lot of time. Before you can call in your employees for a scheduled meeting, you need to take a look at the past projects to see what your employees have done or contributed to them.

When you have an employee monitoring software installed in the workplace, you can easily access your employee’s past activity to find out what they have been up to. That way you can easily evaluate the employee’s performance.

This will also be helpful to the employees. They can get fair appraisals that might lead to their promotions in the company. They can be entitled to get bonuses and other rewards as well. And since they can also have access to their own previous data, they can take it out any time and request their employer for a promotion or increment.

‍Allocate Your Resources Effectively

Within the employee monitoring software, you can take a look at the analytics dashboard to see which teams and employees have performed more efficiently and productively. When you have this information, you can allocate your resources for the next project effectively.

Employee monitoring software can help you provide an overview of your employees’ daily activities. That way you will get a better insight into which of your employees are the busiest and you won’t burden them with more work.

You can calculate every employee’s working hours in one place and you also do not worry about calculating their payroll as it will be fully automated. Apart from calculating your employees’ working hours, you can also track billable hours for your clients effectively.

Cons of Employee Monitoring

Here are some of the disadvantages of employee monitoring:

Employee Privacy Invasion

‍Most employees do not like the idea of being monitored. They are afraid of employee monitoring software because they think it is an invasion of their privacy. To some extent, their concerns are right. However, it completely depends on the employer to not make monitoring look like a privacy invasion.

When an employer explains to his employees that they are only installing monitoring tools to enhance productivity in the company, to calculate their working hours, and to protect the company’s data, employees will understand the importance of employee monitoring.

The employee monitoring tool will only monitor their activity during working hours and won’t track what they do when they leave the office. When employees can have trust in their employers, they wouldn’t dislike the idea of employee monitoring.

Legal Problems

Employee monitoring can also bring up legal issues for companies. Legal problems can arise if you work through the loopholes. Before deploying employee monitoring software in your company, be sure to read about different laws and regulations about monitoring and tracking. Get yourself a legal team and discuss employee monitoring with them.

Damage Employer-Employee Relationship

Employee monitoring may damage the employer and employee relationship if it is not done properly. You need to follow a certain way to deploy and implement employee monitoring software in the workplace. If you don’t follow the right way, you can damage the relationship with your employees forever.

Employee monitoring may cause distrust among employees, increase their stress levels, and also result in high employee turnover. However, if you deploy the monitoring solutions following all the rules and protocols, you can avoid the cons of employee monitoring.