Learn More About Employee Monitoring Software
What is Employee Monitoring Software?
Employee monitoring is broadly defined as a way of monitoring employees to observe and track their activities. This software helps to gather employee information including all user activity when accessing a corporate network, remote worker activity, or when representing the company outside of the office such as at a client location. Employee monitoring helps employers to track email messages written and received, other electronic communications, applications use habits, individual keystrokes, internet browsing history, network logon or off times, files copied to USB drives, their physical location (for remote workers), and employee productivity. Employee monitoring is a part of a larger monitoring system, referred to as enterprise management systems (EMS) that involves monitoring of several types of tracking or surveillance within an organization.
What Types of Employee Monitoring Software Exist?
Device monitoring: Phones and computers can be monitored by managers to keep track of employee calls, emails, and general internet usage. Features like URL blocking can prevent employees from spending time on websites that are not appropriate in a work setting.
Customer interaction monitoring: Customer interactions can be monitored to ensure the employee is communicating to customers in a correct and efficient manner. Managers can use insights to see where an employee needs improvement when speaking to a customer over the phone or text message.
Why Use Employee Monitoring Software?
Employee monitoring software allows companies to track the quality of an employee’s work and the amount of time an employee spends working. Reports highlight the most productive employees, helping companies visualize the productivity of everyone in their workforce. Monitoring doesn’t just put a spotlight on employees who are struggling to focus on work, but it also shows who the best performers are.
Productivity insights: By watching and managing how an employee spends their time, managers can measure performance and time wasted during work hours.
Project focus insights: When managers are aware of what project an employee is focusing on, they can take the opportunity to pivot the employee’s focus when necessary. For example, if a manager notices an employee prioritizing one task over another task with a closer due date, the manager can address the employee and request them to turn their focus on a task that requires immediate attention. Many types of employee monitoring software can be integrated into project management software solutions to streamline this process.
Security insights: Employee monitoring opens up the opportunity to prevent and track employee-related security issues. If a company’s network is compromised, email and internet usage monitoring can pinpoint where and when a security breach happened. Additionally, phone calls can be monitored to ensure employees are not sharing sensitive information or accepting sensitive information from customers.
Workforce transparency: Overall, employee monitoring provides added transparency for management teams. Monitoring gives a high-level view of the overall productivity and roadblocks employees face and allows room for productivity improvements.
What are the Common Features of Employee Monitoring Software?
Call monitoring: Call monitoring allows employers to log and listen in on employee phone calls. Calls are analyzed to ensure they are up to company standards.
Email monitoring: Email monitoring lets employers log email activity of employees. Internal and external communications can be analyzed in an effort to ensure the employee is sending appropriate deliverables and communicating in a manner that is up to company standards.
Internet usage monitoring: Web monitoring allows employers to observe what web pages employees are visiting and for how long. This gives additional insight into where time is being spent most and if an employee is spending an excessive amount of time on websites that are unrelated to work.
Screenshots: Screenshots provide extra context into internet monitoring. Employers have access to real-time views of an employee’s computer screen. Screenshots give extra insight into whether or not the webpage an employee is visiting is appropriate in a work environment.
Time logging: Employers can view how long an employee is spending on a specific project or webpage, thus measuring task efficiency.
Task tracking: Employers can visualize what task the employee is focusing on, which allows managers to step in and communicate task changes to the employee.
Location tracking: The software incorporates GPS functions to track and monitor the whereabouts of employees. This is mostly useful when deliveries and pickup of company goods are concerned.
Alerts: This feature alerts the employer when critical protocols and secured areas are breached.
Behavioral analytics: Employee monitoring systems also focus on behavior metrics. This helps employers to monitor remote teams better and focus on employees who need extra training or guidance.
What are the Benefits of Employee Monitoring Software?
Eliminate wastage: Eliminating wastage is the core function of employee monitoring software. Employee monitoring software helps boost productivity; at the heart of which is to keep employees sticking to best practices and doing what they were paid to do for the company.
Effective management: The data collected using this software helps in building a more efficient team by highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of employees. This leads to more visibility to employers, thereby giving them the power to delegate tasks more efficiently.
Increase employee productivity: As employees are continuously monitored, they become conscious of their actions and work. Also, this helps the employers to find out the process errors and smoothen them up, thus increasing productivity.
Increase security: Employee monitoring software allows users to view saved documents, installed applications, websites visited, and messages sent on company property, like computers and mobile devices. It monitors business files, accounts information, and client data. This can protect companies from insider threats, security breaches, and suspicious behavior.
Improve team performance: Reviewing employee activity helps identify workers who aren't meeting company expectations. Access to data like login and logout time, total time spent on individual tasks, etc., allows companies to examine employees' productivity efficiently.
Who Uses Employee Monitoring Software?
All types of management positions benefit from monitoring their employees. The most beneficial aspect of monitoring is the encompassing productivity reporting that gives managers an idea of how their team is performing on day-to-day tasks. This knowledge allows managers to assign tasks based on the performance level of each employee, figure out which tasks certain team members excel at, and determine potential time-wasting or productivity blockers during working hours.
Software Related to Employee Monitoring Software
Time tracking software: Time tracking software enables workers to either passively or manually track the time spent on projects, tasks, and other deliverables.
Contact center workforce software: Contact center workforce software allows companies to manage their call center employees’ schedules, activities, and performance.
Insider threat management (ITM) software: ITM software is a user activity monitoring software that helps companies prevent internal users from taking malicious or negligent actions within systems, such as accessing, copying, removing, tampering with, or destroying company data or other assets without permission.
Challenges with Employee Monitoring Software
Lowered employee morale: Generally, people don’t like being watched. Not only does it give off a sense of distrust, but it also decreases morale and is considered invasive. Allowing an employee to only focus on work during work hours oftentimes contributes to employee burnout, leading to high turnover rates. Employees shouldn’t be viewed as machines that are required to focus on work for the entirety of their work shift. It’s important for managers to find an appropriate balance when monitoring employees and to make sure they aren’t discouraged.
Legal issues: It’s essential to have employees’ consent to being monitored. Additionally, some states have specific privacy laws that are worth checking before implementing a solution. For example, California law requires employers to indicate whether they are recording an employee’s work-related calls. Companies with overseas employees also need to consider the privacy laws of other countries. Many countries in Europe, for example, have stricter email monitoring laws.
Misleading reporting: In many cases, websites that are considered inappropriate for work may be necessary for the employee to visit. For example, a social media specialist will have social media websites in their employee monitoring usage reports. Managers will need to differentiate between what websites are truly work-related and what websites can contribute to wasting time at work.
How to Buy Employee Monitoring Software?
Before choosing employee monitoring software, employers should figure out what exactly needs to be monitored and how deeply. Employers also need to consider several factors before committing to an employee monitoring solution, such as the workforce size (remote and in-office) and overall budget. Employers with a call center workforce may want to consider a solution with phone call monitoring. Employers with a remote workforce may want a comprehensive solution with internet usage tracking. Above all, employers should consider how closely to monitor employees and ensure employees are comfortable with the chosen solution.
Requirements Gathering (RFI/RFP) for Employee Monitoring Software
Whether a company is purchasing employee monitoring software for the first time or looking to replace their current system, G2.com can assist them with the selection process. The first step is defining a list of requirements the product must meet for the business to be most productive. These requirements will help buyers narrow down the list of products to consider.
First, buyers should evaluate the need for employee monitoring software and determine what functionality will be most useful for the business.
- Will it help employees be more productive?
- Will it help the business avoid liabilities?
- Will it be able to spot business problems before they develop?
Compare Employee Monitoring Software Products
Create a long list
Evaluating vendors should start with a long list, which will help to determine whether or not a given solution is a good fit. With a long list, one creates a broad list of tools that align with one’s business goals. So that there is a level playing field, it is important to ask the same set of questions to each seller.
Create a short list
Next, a whittling down should take place. Through pointed questions, demos, and trials, one can go from a long list to a short one. Although this will differ for each business and use case, three to five products are typically a good number. With this list in hand, businesses can produce a matrix to compare the features and pricing of the various solutions.
Conduct demos
To ensure the comparison is thoroughgoing, the user should demo each solution on the short list with the same use case and datasets. This will allow the business to evaluate like for like and see how each vendor stacks up against the competition.
Selection of Employee Monitoring Software
Choose a selection team
Before getting started, it's crucial to create a winning team that will work together throughout the entire process, from identifying pain points to implementation. The software selection team should consist of members of the organization who have the right interest, skills, and time to participate in this process. A good starting point is to aim for three to five people who fill roles such as the main decision maker, project manager, process owner, system owner, or staffing subject matter expert, as well as a technical lead, IT administrator, or security administrator. In smaller companies, the vendor selection team may be smaller, with fewer participants multitasking and taking on more responsibilities.
Negotiation
Just because something is written on a company’s pricing page, does not mean it is fixed (although some companies will not budge). It is imperative to open up a conversation regarding pricing and licensing. For example, the vendor may be willing to give a discount for multi-year contracts or for recommending the product to others.
Final decision
After this stage, and before going all in, it is recommended to roll out a test run or pilot program to test adoption with a small sample size of users. If the tool is well used and well received, the buyer can be confident that the selection was correct. If not, it might be time to go back to the drawing board.
Employee Monitoring Software Trends
Employee wellness tracking: Companies may take a technological step toward ensuring employee wellness with activity trackers. Oftentimes in the form of a bracelet, activity trackers measure an employee’s heart rate, fitness, and sleeping patterns. While this doesn’t provide insight into workplace efficiency, it does allow employers to provide a wellness program to their employees in an effort to promote healthy habits.
Biometric smart sensors: Although rare due to legal issues, some employers are opting for a more personal monitoring approach with smart keycards. These sensors (typically within keycard badges) measure the number of times an employee gets up out of their seat, how often they raise their voice, and exactly where the employee is in the office.
