Employee monitoring systems are becoming more in demand. A sure sign of the onset of difficult times is company’s attempts to bring order to the work team and to tighten the screws. Typically, this translates into a more careful monitoring of lateness, blocking social networks on company computers, as well as implementing various solutions to keep track of what people do in the office. It is expected that these methods will help improve results and finally identify the lazy employees. Let’s find out what the actual results of employee monitoring can be.
Everything’s Under Control
Problems with Law
No matter how useful such programs may be, you should use them with caution: instead of increasing the efficiency they can lead to problems with the law. If you look at it from employees’ point of view the company collects their personal data, which is unlawful. But recent trends show that courts more often take the employers’ side. Like the landmark ruling of The European Court of Human Rights from January 2016 which basically allows employers to monitor personal correspondence of their employees in the workplace in certain circumstances. However, this case has raised a lot of question and many of them have not been answered. So there are a lot of gray areas still. That’s why you should always consult with a lawyer before installing such system.
The Effect of Presence
One of the program users, Head of B2B-Center staff Sarah Flores, said that the program is used in her company to correct the calculation of wages in the absence of an employee. “Now, if any employee does not come to work, monitoring system sees it and we can quickly contact the head of the department to find out the reason of absence.”
The Result
According to business consultant Michael Greene, there are positive and negative sides in these programs. Thanks to them, the executive sees a more or less realistic picture of how his or her employees work. At the same time, total control generates a lie. “We need to understand that a person is not a robot. Employees cannot do the same thing all day long because there are such factors as the need for distraction and exhaustion.” said the expert. According to Mr. Greene, when using such programs it is necessary to warn people about it in order not to violate the subordinates’ rights. But instead of trying to ban modern communication tools from the office try to teach people to use them for work. For example, social networks allow employees to obtain information from their counterparts and to establish the negotiating process. So, these programs are quite useful in many cases. But they cannot be used on their own or serve as an instrument of oppression and total control. Instead, they will provide information that can become a basis for a whole strategy of improving business processes in your company.
