The Advantages & Disadvantages of Digital Employee Monitoring

One of the challenges that companies have faced since the explosion of hybrid and remote working is how to ensure productivity doesn’t suffer. Managers often worry whether employees are actually doing their work, since they can’t see them in the same way as when they worked in the office.

A majority of organizations have remote staff. Statistics show that 56% of organizations are either completely remote or support a hybrid office approach. This challenge to monitor workforce productivity has led to the rise of “bossware” otherwise known as digital tracking tools for employees. 

While these business tools can have many benefits for employers, they can also have some serious drawbacks and may even end up having a negative effect on productivity, rather than a positive one.

We’ll go through the pros and cons of employee monitoring apps so you can decide whether you want to use them.

What Are Employee Tracking Apps?

There are many different types of apps you can subscribe to that will let you track the digital activities of employees. What this means is that each employee is required to download an app on their device, which will then track and report:

• Keyboard activity (some even track keylogging)
• Mouse activity
• App usage (which apps were used and for how long)
• Website visits (which websites and for how long)
• Clock-in/clock-out timing for payroll
• Screenshots taken intermittently (typically around 3 screenshots per 10 minutes)
• Audio & video captures from the user’s device
• GPS tracking of mobile devices 

What Are the Advantages of Digital Employee Monitoring?

Can Improve Productivity for Slacking Employees

Just about every employer knows that you have your “great” employees that work hard and go above and beyond, your “good” employees that do as expected without any problems, and your “needs improvement” employees that may take every advantage to avoid work when possible.

For that last group, monitoring their digital activities can improve their productivity. When employees know the boss is watching, they are less likely to take unauthorized breaks or clock time while working when they are actually scrolling through social media.

Can Improve Fairness in Employee Recognition

A study by Zapier in 2021 found that a whopping 83% of employees spend up to three hours a day doing a coworker’s work. It’s easy for those that are vocal to get the attention and accolades, even though behind the scenes a quieter employee may actually be producing the results.

Digitally tracking employee activity can improve fairness in recognitions and advancements because it helps managers better track who is doing what. For example, if one employee turns in a stellar PowerPoint presentation, that they say they worked all weekend on, but their tracking doesn’t show them using PowerPoint at all, it could be that they are taking credit for a colleague’s work.

Helps Employers Allocate Employee Tasks

When managers give tasks to employees, they don’t always understand the time needed to complete each task. Digital monitoring apps allow tracking at the project or client level, which can inform how much time is being spent in a particular area.

What Are the Disadvantages of Digital Employee Monitoring?

Can Hurt the Productivity of Good Employees

Digital tracking can tank morale and cause good employees to go from enthusiastic team players to doing the bare minimum because they feel put in a cage. 

When you distill down an employee to the number of keystrokes or mouse movements they generate, it’s demoralizing. Employees with poor morale often stop thinking creatively, they may feel like they can’t take that time because thinking doesn’t generate mouse or keyboard activity.

Can Cause Great Employees to Quit

Your top employees – the ones that are going above and beyond with their noses to the grindstone – may be offended at the suggestion that you don’t trust them. They can feel betrayed that you now feel you need to track their every movement and can see it as an invasion of privacy. 

Nearly half (47%) of surveyed tech employees said they would quit and go elsewhere if their boss tracked them digitally.

Great organizations are built on great relationships between management and employees. Everyone is pulling in the same direction and feels like a family. But when trust is gone, it can cost you the loyalty that’s been keeping your great employees with you for years.

These Apps Aren’t Tracking Output, Performance, or Work Delivery

Digital monitoring apps can’t track whether a great work product was produced, or when your employees come up with cost-saving ideas. Tracking the websites people visit, taking screenshots of their desktops, and counting their keyboard and mouse activity is punitive in nature. It’s designed to “catch someone” doing something they shouldn’t.

These apps often send “productivity” reports that are simply how many times during the day mouse and keyboard activity were recorded. This isn’t true productivity.

What happens if someone is required to be on the phone with customers? Or in meetings with their team? These activities aren’t going to generate those keyboard and mouse counts that the manager is seeing in a daily report. That could easily cause a misunderstanding and make them think an employee was slacking off when they were actually on the phone assisting customers all day.

Tracking by actual output, meeting deadlines, and contributions to the company is often a better indicator of performance and productivity.

Improve Productivity With Innovative Business Solutions

Unbound Digital can help your Tri-Cities company with a number of innovative business solutions to power an in-office, remote, or hybrid workforce. 

Contact us today to learn more! Call 423-467-7777 or reach us online.