Detecting an Idler in the Sales Department

Not all employee monitoring methods lend an equally true-to-fact result that will show the real situation in the company. The executives of the furniture company experienced it first-hand.

The company used an established system of KPIs that had been going on for years. The managers built their view of each employee's abilities and qualifications based on those KPIs. For example, the sales department consisted of one leading employee who always did everything timely and impeccably, three "middle" employees who had ups and downs but did well most of the time and one underachiever. The underachiever was a new employee who had worked for the company for only six months, and the management was dissatisfied with his performance. He missed most of the deadlines, and his productivity was poor. The company was thinking of firing him soon.

When the company's CEO heard about CleverControl from his friend, he was sceptical but decided to test it on the sales department. He did not expect the software to lend results different from what the KPI system already showed. The leader would display the highest productivity, and the "middle" employees would have some unproductive activities in the log. The struggling employee's report would most likely consist of long breaks and hours on Youtube/Instagram/Twitter and such.

To his surprise, the CEO discovered that the underachieving employee was, in fact, the most hardworking one. Predictably, the leading employee was the most effective one, according to the data gathered by CleverControl. The idle time on his computer was limited only to breaks, and the executive did not find any unproductive or non-work-related activities in his logs. Two of the three average performers also demonstrated adequate statistics, but not the third. The reports of his activities showed extensive use of social media and chats, sometimes for four hours a day, and even a couple of adult websites. The executive wondered how the employee could show satisfactory results considering such an amount of unproductive activity, and further investigation of CleverControl logs helped to reveal this mystery. Digging deeper into the employee's reports, the executive found curious screenshots from the work messenger. The employee pushed down his boring and time-consuming tasks to the new employee. When the newbie tried to refuse, the employee threatened to report his low performance and "add a few extra details" to get the newbie fired. As a result, the new employee overworked, spending all his time on the idler's tasks and having no time for his own.

The CEO fired the idler and gave his position to the underperforming employee, who soon showed great results. The executive admitted that without monitoring with CleverControl, he would never reveal the true situation in the department and would fire a hardworking employee.

• Messenger activity

  Screenshots of messenger activity revealed the employee's inappropriate behaviour towards the new colleague.
• Social media monitoring.

  This feature revealed that the employee spent a significant part of his work time on entertainment.
• Activity statistics

  Thanks to this feature, the executive could see how long the employee focused on work and how much time he spent on distractions.