How Not to Overuse the Employee Monitoring System

Noah just got a promotion - he was now the head of the department in a marketing agency, and he was determined to do his best. Previously Noah had often noticed his colleagues scrolling through news or social media at work. His first decision was to eliminate those distractions - or any distractions in the workplace and make his team 1000% productive. Noah started by implementing CleverControl in his department to control the employees' involvement.

Two months later, three out of five employees from Noah's department handed in their resignations. When the surprised CEO invited those employees for a talk, he learned Noah was the reason for their leaving.

Noah's team consisted of proven specialists who had been working in the company for several years. They performed their duties flawlessly, though they sometimes visited entertainment sites at work to take a break. Noah took his new responsibilities too seriously. After installing CleverControl, he started watching each employee's every step - how long breaks they took, what sites they visited, what apps they used, etc. Noah had the Live Panel with screens of all employees on his second monitor the whole day. When he noticed someone did not work on the computer for ten minutes, he dropped them a message asking what they were doing. When Noah saw someone on Facebook, he immediately called and reprimanded them, even if that employee was reading a work-related post. He meticulously registered all cases when the employees were even one minute late from a break. Noah went as far as reading the employees' work chats and looking for any signs of misbehaviour there. He pedantically discussed each case of such "misbehaviour" at the weekly meetings. Those were not only words - Noah denied two employees their bonuses because they were not 100% active on their computers.

Generally, Noah reached his goal with such actions. The employees were technically extremely productive and showed 100% active time. But at the same time, they felt stressed because Noah watched and registered their every step. They could not relax and refresh during the day or take a break to ponder on their current task without Noah calling and asking why they were idle. The employees had to control their every site visit and every word. As proven specialists, they felt offended by such distrust. Besides, continuous pressure and stress led to burnout. The quality of work collapsed, which led to even more pressure from Noah's side. The employees could not stand it any longer and decided to leave.

The CEO had to assign another manager to the team to keep the valuable employees. He also asked us to give recommendations on reorganizing the monitoring and making it less stressful. The result was the following monitoring policy. First of all, no spying on each employee's step. Assess the employee not only by their active time but also by how well they do their work tasks. Well-performing employees should not feel the pressure of monitoring at all. A quick glance at their user activity statistics will be enough to ensure they stay involved. If the employee is underperforming, studying their activity log may tell you why this is happening. Talking over the problem with the employee works mostly better than reprimanding. Finally, the manager should not demand 100% productivity and activity - human brains require breaks to recharge. Work out an acceptable level of productivity for your team or industry and check the monitoring reports for consistency with that level.

• User Statistics

  This feature allows you to check if the employee is productive.
• Event Log

  If an employee is underperforming, the data collected by CleverControl will help you find where their time and effort go.
• Visualisation en direct

  This feature is another way to perform quick checks on the team. It is also a great tool to keep an eye on idlers.