Employee monitoring software is a system that can track and analyse employees' activity on their computers. It has been on the rise since the early 2000s due to the development of computer technologies, and the 2020's Covid-19 pandemic has sent its popularity spiralling up. According to the recent Instant Office study, 78% of today's employers track their staff using various tools.
Usually, employee monitoring software consists of the agent that employees install on their devices and the monitoring dashboard that allows managers to receive logs and reports.
Employee monitoring software provides visibility into configured work-related activity. From active time to visited websites, it collects configured work-related activity data on authorized company devices during working hours. More advanced employee monitoring software goes far beyond simply collecting the data. It provides ready-to-go reports on each employee's productivity and payroll calculations, and basically saves the manager's time.
The most overt purpose of this kind of software is to monitor employees' productivity. How much time do they spend on the project, and how much - on funny cat videos on Youtube? Are they involved in the work process or take coffee breaks every 10 minutes? Do they google work-related information or cheap tickets to Las Vegas for the weekend? Employee monitoring apps are designed to answer exactly these kinds of questions.
Besides finding out slackers, employee monitoring software serves several less obvious but no less critical purposes. To begin with, it can help to reveal struggling employees. Whether they are sweating over the overwhelming workload or tasks they have not enough experience with as young specialists, they may hesitate to tell the manager about the difficulties. Revealing these issues and carefully working towards eliminating them will do more than boost productivity - it will improve the climate in the office and your image as a manager.
Another not-so-evident reason to try an employee monitoring software is controlling company resources. Did your expenses on printer paper grow recently? Are you wasting money on the software your employees do not use? Find it out with the help of the reports. They will show how often employees work in a particular program or if they use office printers for personal needs.
The top-notch employee monitoring software is equipped with data protection modules. They prevent access, copying or sending confidential information and warn the administrator if something suspicious pops up. Having this all-knowing guard at your hand, you don't need to worry about data leakage or unauthorized access to corporate data.
These are only a few problems that employee monitoring tools can solve. Let's dive deeper into the topic and learn about top solutions in this field.
Types of Employee Monitoring Software
Employee monitoring software falls into three types: time tracking, activity monitoring and data loss prevention (or DLP).
Time tracking apps are essential if you look to automate routine processes such as attendance, time tracking and payroll calculations. They record login and logout time, periods of the employee's inactivity and time spent on each task. You can estimate how much time employees spend on a project and who and when worked on a specific assignment. Accurate tracking data is also vital for billing customers if you work on a contract or an hourly pay basis. The best part is that reports are generated in real-time automatically, eliminating the risk of cheating or human error. Time trackers have other benefits: they facilitate productivity improvements, motivate employees and show you where the money is spent.
The range of application of these reports is immense. They provide valuable insights on the productivity and involvement levels, help to discover ineffective work patterns and underperforming employees, save company recourses and more. If implemented carefully and ethically, activity tracking software can become a reliable partner in growing your business.
Data loss prevention is the most complex type of employee monitoring software. It detects potential data breaches and other threats by monitoring, detecting and blocking data in use, in motion and at rest. In other words, the program performs content inspection and contextual analysis of data sent via email or messengers, in use by the employee on their device or stored on a company server. DLP software incorporates several elaborate analytical techniques, for example, exact data matching, exact or partial file matching, rule-based and category analysis. Exact data matching means that the program searches for exact matches from the database dump or live database. In the case of file matching, the software compares the hashes of files against exact fingerprints without analyzing the contents of these files. The rule-based analysis is the most common technique. The program scans data based on the preconfigured rules, such as card or security numbers. Pre-built categories analysis is a similar method: the DLP system searches for common types of sensitive data, for example, bank details, social security numbers, etc. Above-described methods heavily rely on categorization, but what if the violation does not fall into these categories? Modern DLP systems employ even more intricate techniques to detect and prevent such violations, for example, lexicon analysis, machine learning and statistical analysis.
Companies use DLP systems to prevent data breaches, exfiltration, loss, leakage or destruction of sensitive information. DLP also serve to ensure that the company complies with relevant regulations and protects Personally Identifiable Information (PII).
In this article, we will mostly focus on activity tracking software.
Features of Employee Monitoring Software
Despite the large selection of activity monitoring software on the market, many features are typical for most of them. Let\'s have a look at the functionality that you can expect from a decent employee monitoring app:
Web browsing and URL monitoring
Email and messaging scanning, often with AI to flag specific content
Location tracking via GPS for field-based roles
Screen recording and periodic snapshots for activity verification
These trends reflect a maturing industry that is learning to balance detailed operational insights with growing employee expectations for privacy and ethical transparency. Employers are increasingly adopting sophisticated, AI-powered solutions not merely for oversight, but to foster a more productive, secure, and supportive work environment.
FAQs
How are employers monitoring their employees?
Employers are mostly monitoring the general work performance or attendance of the employees through employee monitoring software. These days, employers are increasingly turning to these solutions as a resource to motivate and reward their employees, increase productivity, and drive decision-making.
What can employee monitoring software do?
Employee monitoring software has evolved quite a lot and is now used for much more than just tracking work hours. These tools can help businesses track employees on social media and the web, provide performance assessment reports, detect risks and frauds, etc., — all while enabling remote monitoring.
Does employee monitoring increase productivity?
By providing insight into the work habits and productivity of the employees, employee monitoring software helps businesses figure out what needs to be done to increase productivity. The right employee monitoring software can help identify and quantify factors influencing an employee's productivity, like work environment, workload, engagement levels, etc.
How do employees feel about being monitored?
That's a subjective question. While some employees may not mind being monitored, others may feel fenced in. This depends on several factors, like their level of trust in their employer and management, the industry they work in, etc. This is why businesses must take necessary precautions (employee consent) and ensure that they're not violating the privacy of their employees while achieving their goals.
How much monitoring of employee activities is appropriate at work?
There is no universal agreement on when and how many activities should be monitored. The way it is managed depends on the company culture, the industry of the business, and other factors. However, most industries that involve heavy data processing and analysis, such as banking, financial services, and health care, tend to focus quite highly on holistic employee monitoring.
Is employee monitoring legal?
In general, yes. However, public sector and social service organisations often have certain restrictions on the use of employee monitoring software. Besides, states can have different laws and regulations that govern the employee of, let's say, video surveillance, data collection, etc. Therefore, employers must put in place adequate safeguards to protect against potential data breaches and misuse of information by adhering to their state's privacy laws.
Do employers have to notify employees of monitoring?
The best practice is to notify employees as soon as the employee monitoring solution has been (or is to be) deployed. This way, employees will be aware of what their employers are monitoring and in what capacity. It also allows them to voice any concerns they might have.
Is it legal to monitor employees without their knowledge?
The legality of this is dependent on the state's privacy laws. Some states do allow this, provided specific requirements are met. Even then, the employees must consent to their employers monitoring their activities, and the employer must state in their privacy policies what will be monitored, how it will be used, etc., to prevent any data misuse.
Can employee monitoring be done ethically?
The ethical use of employee monitoring software depends on the relevant digital assets being treated as private and confidential. Employers must follow the applicable laws in case of data breach and legal ramifications. It is also essential that employers clearly state what parts of their employees' digital assets will be monitored in their privacy policy and allow employees to give their consent before monitoring. For clarity on this subject, it's advisable for employers to consult legal counsel before committing to employee monitoring software.
Is it legal to monitor employee emails?
Emails are an integral part of the daily workflow and, as such, are often monitored. Many employers use employee monitoring software to check for messages that violate their corporate policies or those that are critical to their business. However, it's vital that the employer takes the necessary legal precautions and ensures they are within their rights to monitor employee emails, especially given the myriad of laws and regulations that govern email privacy today.
Why is employee monitoring important?
Employee monitoring is necessary for businesses to stay competitive in today's digital world. It helps employers and employees monitor their performance and improve it by identifying factors contributing to increased productivity, reduced turnover and absenteeism, etc. It also allows employers to nurture and grow their business by collecting and analysing their employees' data to help them better understand their needs and adapt to the changing environment.
Why it\'s important to use monitoring software for the whole office?
Employee monitoring software can be used to track and understand the behaviour patterns of employees, which are critical to any business. These patterns could inform future human resource policies, change working hours, training needs, etc. For example, if a business is seeing a growing number of employees checking their personal email accounts or eCommerce sites during work hours and might want to restrict usage in order to increase productivity, visualisations facilitated by employee monitoring software can prove to be exceptionally valuable.
