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Lately, employee monitoring software has been growing and vastly entering different business processes. We do realize that sometimes it can seem rather daunting having to need to choose from such a variety of offers on the market.
That’s why, today we’re going to take a closer look at the examples of employee monitoring tools and figure out how their features and the gathered data can be used to enhance productivity, improve employee engagement and overall lead to business development.
What Employee Monitoring Software Is
In its essence, employee monitoring software is a type of software that allows employers to track and monitor all the activities of their employees at their PCs during working hours. It provides executives with valuable insights into how their staff spend their time, which in turn helps to improve employee efficiency and ensure compliance with company policies. Employee monitoring software examples of usage include monitoring employee productivity, overseeing remote workers, tracking employee attendance, as well as preventing sensitive data loss.
Most Notable Employee Monitoring Features
Taking a look at the current state of the market, there’s no doubt that there is a plethora of different types of employee monitoring software. Examples of employee monitoring solutions vary greatly, since different work monitoring tools offer a range of different capabilities. And while we’ve already compiled a list of best employee monitoring software of 2024 for further ease of choosing the suitable option for particular needs of each company, it would be nice to also take a look at some of the overarching features of most solutions in this category.
Here are the most significant features of such tools that companies can use to their advantage:
- Time tracking. Most employee monitoring solutions for time tracking let you monitor employee hours so that you have an overview of how much time everyone works. Some tools can also show periods of inactivity along with the amount of time spent on activities deemed unproductive.
- Productivity analysis. Reports on individual and team productivity are generated, thus highlighting both strong points and bottlenecks of work processes.
- User activity monitoring. User activity monitoring software helps to track all user activities on company devices, including the apps and websites employees access, as well as to monitor their communication via emails and messengers in order to understand work habits and pinpoint potential distractions.
- Project management. Ideally, employee monitoring and project management solutions should go hand-in-hand, providing companies with the ability to make their operations as transparent as possible and enhance their project management processes.
- Alerts and notifications. Most employee monitoring software examples allow managers to set up real-time alerts for certain activities, such as accessing restricted sites or displaying prolonged periods of inactivity.
- Screen recording and screenshots. Some employee monitoring options provide the option to capture real-time screen activities so that work processes can be reviewed in more detail. However, one needs to make sure that this feature can be turned on and off for employee privacy concerns.
- Data loss prevention. Employee monitoring tools with data loss prevention modules help executives make sure that their sensitive company data is secure and prevent unauthorized data transfer or leaks.
Benefits of Using Employee Monitoring Software: Client Cases
Employee monitoring statistics show rather clearly that such tools are exhibiting a rise in their popularity. But what exactly are their benefits for businesses?
1. Increased team productivity
Time wastage is common in any office, and it has become even more prevalent in a remote setting. Any time wasted or spent on not work-related tasks is a financial loss for the company.
We can use meetings as an example of such downfall. A dedicated HBR survey revealed that 65% of executives considered meetings to be the culprit that’s keeping them from completing their own work. 71% of said meetings were considered to be either unproductive or inefficient. It can be rather difficult to know where such inefficiencies are coming from without accurate time tracking and productivity monitoring.
Let’s say a manager notices that one employee consistently falls behind on their deadlines. By using employee monitoring software, it would be possible to identify that the person in question frequently gets sidetracked by watching TV series during working hours. Having found that out, the manager could then introduce new policies to limit the use of unproductive websites during work hours.
2. Increased efficiency of remote employees
Employee monitoring solutions’ time-tracking and productivity measurement features could also be used to track and assess performance of remote employees.
For example, we’ve dedicated a whole article to revealing how monitoring is perceived from a remote employee’s point of view. As a result of our investigation, we found out that monitoring tools both discipline employees and offer them some sort of a game element, thus motivating to work harder.
3. Minimized supervision and micromanagement
Employee monitoring tools provide a helping hand in reducing supervision.
First, when employees are aware that they’re being monitored, they’re much less likely to spend their time doing non-work related activities. Second, once monitoring tools are implemented, the need for managers to ask employees what exactly they’re working on will cease to exist, since executives will be able to check reports to see what people have been working on and whether they’ve been productive.
We’ve previously shared an example how a large insurance company managed to set up monitoring of 1,200 computers from both technical and organizational sides of the question. Properly configured employee monitoring software allows managers to stop wasting their time on supervision and instead invest said time in more valuable activities like planning, strategy, training, and more.
4. Improved reporting
Employee monitoring tools offer in-depth reports on individual employee and team activities, providing high-level and granular views of what’s happening at any given time of the workday.
Such software also provides data-driven insights into inefficient processes and helps managers with decision-making and figuring out how to streamline business processes.
For instance, extensive monitoring features help reveal when employees take up third-party orders during billable working hours, thus also acting as freelancers and hindering the effectiveness of the company.
5. More transparent work processes
When used responsibly, employee monitoring software is a valuable resource for companies of all sizes, seeing how it provides a wealth of information about all the internal processes in the company.
Monitoring software can even help detect improper behavior at work, going as far as putting an end to cases of office stalking and becoming the final argument in any arising tricky situations.
6. Better work allocation
Estimating the precise amount of time it would require to complete a task presents a rather difficult task for managers. And when companies lack clear data, work allocation gets based on rather inaccurate guesstimates.
Monitoring tools solve this problem by offering detailed insights into the internal team processes. It becomes easier for managers to reallocate tasks if they see that some employees are much more overworked than others.
Various features of such tools can also be used to identify employees trying to cheat the monitoring software to conceal their unproductive activities.
What’s more, distributing work proportionally and equally creates a feeling of fairness and transparency, thus improving overall employee satisfaction.
7. Stronger data security
Comprehensive monitoring software is designed to protect company networks, systems and devices from a wide range of threats, offering such features as data encryption, threat detection or malware protection.
These tools help businesses to eliminate possibilities of unauthorized data access, prevent cyber attacks and identify cases of employees’ fraudulent behavior.
8. Enhanced employee engagement
Employee monitoring software aids in increasing team engagement by helping minimize supervision and improving their productivity.
As long as deadlines are met and quality standards are maintained, managers don’t have to look at countless analytics and reports to make sure that their specialists are actually busy working instead of, say, wasting billable hours browsing social media.
It also aids in catching employees try to fake activity at their work PCs, pretending to be engaged in something productive and in reality carrying on with their private matters.
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