If you’ve been keeping up with social media and reading up on the latest news articles, you know that “fully returning to the office” won’t be happening any time soon. A great (and ever-growing) number of companies are listening to the expressed desires of their employees to continue working from the comfort of their own homes by adapting to either fully remote or hybrid work.
You may be wondering “How do employers keep track of their staff when working from home?”, and the answer is simple; by using the best employee monitoring software. The entire monitoring process, in this case, does not imply a manager watching an employee's screen over the shoulder, observing their every move.
It refers to work tracking software that tracks, records, and often time, analyzes an employee’s online behavior as soon as they’ve punched in. You can learn more about this tool, here. Let’s go over the main reasons why you should start using it, too.
Employee Productivity
Managing productivity in the workplace can be a real challenge, especially now - with the level of employee engagement on a continuous slump. Gallup measures employee engagement by surveying a random sample of the working population (both U.S. full-time and part-time employees) about specific workplace elements such as productivity, retention, organizational outcomes, overall well-being, etc.
According to their report employee engagement in the U.S. saw its first annual decline in a decade, as it dropped to 36 percent in 2020 and 34 percent in 2021. They have already seen this pattern continue in the first quarter of 2022, with 32 percent of engaged employees, and 17 percent actively disengaged.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported the largest decline (7.5 percent in the first quarter of 2022) in quarterly productivity since the third quarter of 1947 when the decrease measured 11.7 percent. So, how can you promote employee engagement while putting a stop to employee time theft?
Elimination of Employee Time Theft
In order to fully understand how you can tackle this problem, it’s important to know what employee time theft is exactly. Time theft occurs when an employee gets paid for the time that they should have been working - when they really weren’t. Time theft isn’t always malicious.
Sometimes it occurs simply because there isn't a staff time tracker in place, causing the employee to overestimate the time that they spent on their break or their work time in general. Below are some examples of employee time theft:
The solution to eliminating employee time theft is installing a monitoring app. This type of software can make a world of difference when it comes to increasing productivity and putting a stop to employees wasting their time while on the clock.
An employee can easily use web apps that were designed to disguise their unproductive web surfing as something seemingly work-related. However, this scenario is not possible with a work monitoring app in place.
Safety and Team Management
Cybersecurity and digital safety are two topics that have been getting a lot of attention in the past five years. With the rise of cybercrime and a heightened need for impenetrable security, it’s crucial to have systems in place that prevent any malicious internet usage, as well as potential cyber-attacks. Data leaks, data breaches, and other forms of cybercrime can be halted with the right employee monitoring tool.
Right now, the hybrid work model is at an all-time high. The lockdowns in 2020 proved that people can still work just as efficiently in the comfort of their own homes. This caused a big shift in favor of hybrid work opportunities since companies want to appease to the wishes of their employees. Activity tracker software allowed for an easy, hassle-free transition, without loss in output.
By doing something as simple as track internet usage, key logs, screenshots, and having insight into a transparent worktime analysis, you’re not only keeping your onsite, hybrid, and remote workers productive; you’re keeping your workers and your company’s data safe, too.
Employee Monitoring Software: Benefits For Everyone
Using this technology reaps a lot of benefits for both sides, however, it’s still viewed as a hot topic amongst companies and enterprises. Nobody wants to implement software that makes their workers feel like they are being spied on or like their privacy is being stripped away from them.
Even though most monitoring apps do not breach privacy, it’s still important to set up a trial period before you implement said software for your company and all of its workers. Using the right tool that aids the monitoring needs of your business provenly eases the overall levels of stress for all parties involved.