Employee-monitoring software: blessing or curse?

Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and employ­ee-mon­i­tor­ing soft­ware is becom­ing increas­ing­ly pop­u­lar, espe­cial­ly with so many staff now work­ing from home. These pack­ages enable man­age­ment to mon­i­tor staff per­for­mance by record­ing clicks and key­strokes, time spent on web­sites, emails sent and more. But they have been crit­i­cised for invad­ing work­ers’ pri­va­cy.

FOR: Greater oversight helps informed decision-making

“Since the start of the pan­dem­ic, we have seen three times the usu­al busi­ness from both direct cus­tomers and our part­ners,” says Eli Sut­ton, vice pres­i­dent of glob­al oper­a­tions for pro­duc­tiv­i­ty soft­ware sup­pli­er Tera­mind.

With record num­bers of peo­ple work­ing from home, employ­ers are, more than ever, look­ing to keep track of their staff. Indeed, accord­ing to data from Top10VPN, glob­al demand for employ­ee-mon­i­tor­ing soft­ware increased by 87 per cent in April, com­pared with the month­ly aver­age before the pan­dem­ic.

Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty soft­ware can give man­agers a clear view of exact­ly what work­ers are doing, from the times they log in and out, to their active and idle peri­ods dur­ing the day, and the web­sites and social net­works they use.

“Any­one that has worked at home before knows it is very easy to become dis­tract­ed for var­i­ous rea­sons and it takes a cer­tain lev­el of dis­ci­pline to work at home,” says Stephen Mor­row, co-own­er of mon­i­tor­ing soft­ware sup­pli­er Sen­tryPC.

“Busi­ness­es are pay­ing their employ­ees to per­form spe­cif­ic tasks and they want to make sure their time is focused on those tasks.”

Mon­i­tor­ing also enables man­agers to assess the effec­tive­ness of process­es, as well as indi­vid­u­als, and to reassess tar­gets or teams.

The advan­tages don’t end there. There are clear secu­ri­ty risks asso­ci­at­ed with home work­ing, for exam­ple, and mon­i­tor­ing staff activ­i­ty helps with both pre­ven­tion and detec­tion of secu­ri­ty breach­es and risky behav­iour.

It can also help avoid micro-man­age­ment and allow employ­ers to demon­strate their objec­tiv­i­ty when eval­u­at­ing staff per­for­mance.

Tyler Sell­horn, direc­tor of cus­tomer expe­ri­ence at pro­duc­tiv­i­ty soft­ware sup­pli­er Hub­staff, points out that employ­ees can ben­e­fit from access to their own pro­duc­tiv­i­ty data.

“Because work is tracked more eas­i­ly, employ­ees don’t need to stop what they’re doing to report back on progress. They can avoid the dai­ly sta­tus calls or fre­quent check-ins with their man­ag­er,” she says. “This allows for more focused work time.”

With the infor­ma­tion pro­vid­ed, employ­ees can make smarter deci­sions and focus more time on crit­i­cal work, while a dash­board gives employ­ees a clear overview of their work­ing week.

And, says Sut­ton, mon­i­tor­ing soft­ware can actu­al­ly help employ­ers keep staff on board through the pan­dem­ic.

“Not only are we see­ing a dra­mat­ic uptick from new cus­tomers, but most of our active clients are adding licences as opposed to remov­ing them, hir­ing rather than fir­ing,” he says.

“Apart from this, we’re also get­ting reports from our cus­tomers that not only are their employ­ees hap­pi­er work­ing from home, but they are also com­plet­ing tasks at an accel­er­at­ed rate. So employ­ees are grate­ful for the oppor­tu­ni­ty to work from home.”

AGAINST: Employee monitoring infringes on personal privacy

Ear­li­er this year, Bar­clays was forced to scrap a sys­tem that tracked the time employ­ees spent at their desks, with the Infor­ma­tion Com­mis­sion­er’s Office (ICO) launch­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion.

“Peo­ple expect they can keep their per­son­al lives pri­vate and that they are also enti­tled to a degree of pri­va­cy in the work­place,” the ICO com­ment­ed at the time. “If organ­i­sa­tions wish to mon­i­tor their employ­ees, they should be clear about its pur­pose and that it brings real ben­e­fits.”

And many believe that it does­n’t, with research from the Char­tered Insti­tute of Per­son­nel and Devel­op­ment (CIPD) reveal­ing that near­ly half of work­ers believe they’re being mon­i­tored at work and three-quar­ters say­ing the use of such tech­nolo­gies dam­ages trust with­in the work­place.

Only one in eight thinks the ben­e­fits of work­place mon­i­tor­ing out­weigh the down­sides from a work­er per­spec­tive and 43 per cent are con­cerned intro­duc­tion of these tech­nolo­gies could make it eas­i­er for their pri­va­cy to be vio­lat­ed.

Mon­i­tor­ing on a small­er scale, such as using timesheets and align­ing to sales tar­gets, was seen as more accept­able.

“CIPD research shows that intru­sive mon­i­tor­ing at work can dam­age trust and morale, and can cause stress and anx­i­ety,” says Hay­fa Mohdzai­ni, CIPD’s senior research advis­er for data, tech­nol­o­gy and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence.

“More­over, employ­ers can get into trou­ble if mon­i­tor­ing breach­es an individual’s right to respect for their pri­vate and fam­i­ly life.”

Research from the Prospect Union reveals that employ­ees are most uneasy about cam­era mon­i­tor­ing, with four in five say­ing it made them uncom­fort­able. Two-thirds were uncom­fort­able with key­stroke mon­i­tor­ing and three-quar­ters with the use of wear­ables.

And this trans­lates to real issues with trust between employ­er and employ­ee, with around half of work­ers say­ing they thought intro­duc­ing mon­i­tor­ing soft­ware would dam­age their rela­tion­ship with their man­ag­er. This fig­ure rose to 62 per cent among younger work­ers.

As the pan­dem­ic con­tin­ues, there’s also a real dan­ger of mis­sion creep, says Pro­fes­sor J.S. Nel­son, an expert on busi­ness law and ethics at Vil­lano­va Uni­ver­si­ty.

“New tech­nolo­gies come out and are spun with a pan­dem­ic-relat­ed aspect to them, but then you find out they are tru­ly being used for oth­er things after the ini­tial roll­out,” she says.

“Once track­ing soft­ware is installed in a build­ing or on a device, even a per­son­al cell phone, there is not much impe­tus for an employ­er to remove it and there is no check on what the employ­er can record.”