Employee monitoring – an important part of the HRMS system is gaining more and more importance. With cut-throat competition, every business wants to move forward on a fast track with high performance in today’s world. There are multiple ways to make a business successful, and one among them is by decreasing costs with increased employee efficiency. This is particularly important for SMBs where (small and medium businesses) quality, cost, and engaging customers are equally important. So, it makes a lot of sense to implement employee monitoring software like HRMS in the existing HR system. Though an HRMS system is a costly affair, with the proliferation of cloud technology, HRMS has become a viable option for small businesses and startups. With the HRMS set up online, it leverages the company or HR to monitor its employees from anywhere, anytime, and from any device by making the business process more streamlined.
However, before choosing an employee monitoring software, the next immediate question that arises here is what the pros and cons of employee monitoring are and how they increase productivity?
The Pros of Employee Monitoring
Improve the employee efficiency level
Employee efficiency assessment is critical as it is directly related to employee productivity. Assigned job duties and continuous monitoring keep them on toes, which ultimately motivates them to deliver better. At the end of the assessment year, the written report of performance highlights the core strengths and weaknesses that help an employee become more focused on his job duties.
Employee monitoring means easier to identify the deserving candidate
Regular employee monitoring means a better supervising system that gives evidence of employee workability and their data regarding their organization's dedication. This makes it easy for the organization to identify good performing employees and rewarding them accordingly. At the same time, employees get more faith in the organization, ultimately building up a trustworthy relationship between the employer and the employee.
Ensure business privacy
Data breaches are a common problem in any organization if not handled properly. Utilizing employee monitoring software, this can be achieved efficiently. Continuous employee monitoring through HRMS tools ensures no leakage of company confidential data to outside. This is also essential to run a business without any IT risk and threats. These employee monitoring software help in running organization rules and policies as well.
An employee monitoring software has many features to track and protect the organization from IT thefts. For example:
Tracking a website
An employee monitoring software tracks websites opened and accessed by the employee. This also helps to count the time he spent outside his work and how much time he spent on work. This is an input for performance analysis too.
Web Filtering
An employee monitoring software can filter the websites that are not inclined to business ethics and policies and are not related to business. For example, social, adult, IM chats, etc. It solely depends on the company to determine which websites they would filter and which ones to access.
Email monitoring
An employee monitoring software can track every email details sent by the employee through various Email accounts.
Logging Keystrokes
Some employee monitoring software can also record the keystrokes to easily record any email or passwords of any websites used by the employee.
Proper utilization of working hours
When employees know they are under constant surveillance of the employee performance system, they can utilize working hours properly. It pushes them to work better and restrain from wasting time during working hours. No doubt, this is a productive outcome for the company. Using an employee monitoring software like time doctor, a company can supervise its employees in the following ways:
Capturing Screenshot
Such software can also take a screenshot of what an employee is doing during working hours instead of working. This can be used as performance analysis data during the appraisal.
PC Tracking
An employee monitoring software can track each employee through tracking their respective computers. It reveals whether they are active or idle and how much they are working during the working hours. This can helps to track the business performance relating to employee performance.
Better customer satisfaction
When employees work under tight employee monitoring, it enhances effectiveness and productivity. It leads towards the best outcome and customer satisfaction. For a business, it helps in rapid growth.
The Cons of employee monitoring
It may create a morale dilemma for the employee
Employee monitoring ethics should be at par level. You can install employee monitoring software free, but whenever an employee monitoring software is installed in the system, it creates overstress on the employee. As they lose privacy in the workplace, it may bring their morale down, and a kind of insecurity feeling work all along. This sometimes may cause reduced efficiency.
Increases the expenditure
HRMS software or employee monitoring software, if set up on-premises, is a costly affair. It needs many electronic devices and employee monitoring apps to install in the systems. This becomes time-consuming and needs a lot of effort and investment.
Employee monitoring software is a one-stop-shop for all HRM activities
Manual practices for managing HR tasks are difficult in the long run. This also creates a hindrance in accessing your HR management system on-the-go. Additionally, it becomes cumbersome to continue in a non-HRMS platform. Cloud-based employee monitoring software covers the following:
• Payroll Management
• Self-service for employees, managers and aspiring candidates
• Performance Management
• Recruitment
• Absence/Leave Management
• Report generation
• Cloud-based so can be accessed from anywhere anytime
• Overall employee Management
Apart from that by utilizing an employee monitoring software –
-No need to set up the hardware so cost-effective.
-Everything is online so no need to take back up
-Highly productive as everything is automated
What to look for in an employee monitoring software?
As cybersecurity has become a mainstream issue for every company, it is essential to focus on external and internal threats. Employee monitoring software comes into the picture where you need to monitor your employee activities closely. This also finds any flaw areas during their activities, which may pose your internal security at risk. We have already mentioned those threat areas and the pros of employee monitoring in the previous section. Employee monitoring software gives acceptable policy teeth, which must work as a productive employee monitoring solution. The best employee monitoring software, specifically for SMBs, must enable a company to manage and enforce an acceptable use policy. However, it would not invest much time and cost in it. It should be capable of detecting a real-time threat, applying an internet filter, and blocking undesired sites.
Most importantly, the features of employee monitoring software depend on the requirement and policies of the company. What all things come under it? Here is a list-
Various types of monitoring and blocking features in employee monitoring software
How much liberty a company will offer to its employees in terms of internet surfing, and to what extent will this feature be designed.
Furthermore, this must cover multiple options. For example, during which time of the working hour sites will be blocked, or whether the employees would not get any opportunity to access the internet. The software must cover everything you need to monitor employee performance.
Visual reports
Report generation is an integral part of HR activity. Thus your employee monitoring software must be capable of generating an easy-to-read, statistical analysis of employee habits with a visual breakdown in a regular manner. The best employee monitoring software also gives you the option of notification regarding when and how you want to see the report. For example, such notification may alert you when an employee downloads any document from a forbidden website.
Easy archiving facility in in employee monitoring software
To manage the company network and employees remotely, it is necessary to access internet filter data remotely. Additionally, it needs to include automatic archiving for the official web monitoring software. Thus, choosing internet filter software to record employees' online searches and take their monitors' screenshots is essential. So, this must come in handy with the employee monitoring software.
Good product support
An employee monitoring software with visually appealing interfaces and a clear layout definitely gives you to feel overwhelming. Besides, it provides confidence in administrative activities for all your monitoring options. Not only handy features but also product support is essential when the monitoring software is a daily need and handles important employee-related data. The product must come with adequate help options like email, phone, live chat, etc.
Final verdict
Today’s employer has the capability and legal right to read email and access employee computers, their files, and track network activities. Such monitoring data is analyzed for the organizations’ benefit. As we have discussed in the pros of employee monitoring, it monitors the safety and productivity of the employees and helps businesses financially. It resists unethical employees to snip time and money from the business. Also, it redefines the HR processes in monitoring employee actions. Employee monitoring software allows the growth of the financial profits of companies against a small investment. Most importantly, employee monitoring handles employee job-related issues like poor performance, illegal activities, etc. So, employee monitoring and employee monitoring software works to serve well for the company and increases productivity.