Best Practices in Transparent Employee Monitoring
Most companies today recognize the importance of employee trust. This is why, when implementing employee monitoring software, it is recommended to implement the best practices to ensure transparency and avoid potential misunderstandings.
These practices include defining a clear purpose for monitoring, developing a comprehensive monitoring policy, tracking the right metrics, making sure employee data is protected, and avoiding selective monitoring.
Learn more about which practices you need to implement for effective and transparent employee monitoring by reading below.
Why Employee Trust is Important
The main objective of transparent monitoring is to build employee trust. However, some employers may wonder why employee trust is important after all.
Employee trust is the bedrock of productive relationships and the cement that holds workers to their jobs, making it a key component in every successful business.
Workers are more inclined to go the extra mile when they believe their bosses trust them. They are also more inclined to be open and transparent with coworkers, which boosts teamwork and efficiency.
Employee trust is also a key factor in how productive employees are. When employees feel trusted, they are ready to share information and ideas, take risks, and be open to feedback.
A lack of trust between employers and employees can cause stress and anxiety, which in turn can harm workers’ physical and mental health. It can also cause workers to keep information or ideas to themselves, which stops new ideas and creativity from developing.
In addition, a lack of trust can cause damage to the connections that exist between employees and their managers, which decreases employee morale and motivation.
But trust among workers is not something you can just presume; it needs constant attention from management in the form of open dialogue and respectful behavior from coworkers.
In addition, companies can develop a stronger sense of trust among their workforce by implementing employee monitoring software, which increases both transparency and responsibility.
In short, establishing a trusting environment allows companies to bring out the best in their workers.
Best Practices for Transparent Employee Monitoring
Following are some practices to consider to ensure transparency throughout the monitoring process:
Define Clear Purpose
Ensure that, as an employer, you only collect data for the purpose of improving productivity. To get your staff on board, be transparent about how their data will be used for their own benefit (e.g., to prevent burnout, boost morale, and balance workloads).
Develop a Comprehensive Policy
A comprehensive employee monitoring policy should incorporate the following things:
Specific
Stay away from generalizations like “We may monitor communications.” Instead, be specific. Consider adding statements such as “We can monitor and record emails sent through business messaging services, such as email and direct message inboxes.”
Limited
Make sure you determine what kinds of devices and situations really require surveillance. Then, create a monitoring policy that only applies to these specific devices and situations. The concept of accountability is a two-way street; an all-encompassing policy will not help you create trust with your staff.
Relevant
Remote workers often use their own devices for work. However, for employees who work from the office, monitoring may not be necessary on personal computers. Make sure that your policy is applicable to different kinds of employees and can differentiate between them where it is required to do so.
Track the Right Metrics
Surveillance in the workplace has never been easier, with all the tools at one’s fingertips. Transparent and ethical employee monitoring, on the other hand, requires you to restrict the scope of your policy.
Stay focused on the key performance indicators (KPIs) that will determine the company’s success. The following are examples of standard measures that are both beneficial and justified:
Output
Monitoring productivity is sometimes necessary for employees who work remotely. For example, you can keep track of the websites that your employees visit in order to help them avoid time-wasting temptations such as social networking platforms.
Performance
Ensuring that employees are effectively carrying out essential duties is beneficial for every business. This can be done by monitoring work-related communications and devices.
Protect Employee Data
Private information, including financial details and messages sent for purposes other than business, should never be monitored. You should not put your employees’ right to privacy at risk while safeguarding company assets.
Avoid Selective Monitoring
Although some supervisors may have taken an interest in employee monitoring to check in on remote workers’ productivity, the idea that this practice should be exclusive to remote workers is wrong.
Gaining insights into productivity from user activity data is beneficial for all employees, regardless of where they are located.
Monitoring a particular group can become problematic for a number of reasons, including the culture of the organization, the morale of the employees, and the perception of impartiality.
How Wolfeye Can Help
Use the aforementioned guidelines as a guide to conduct employee monitoring in an open, transparent, and cooperative manner. For best results, consider an employee monitoring software that already considers all of these aspects of transparent monitoring.
For example, Wolfeye values employee privacy and believes that data and analytics can help businesses operate more efficiently, which in turn improves the work environment and gives employees a better chance to succeed.
Rather than using data for gaining personal information, Wolfeye is designed for the purpose of empowering employers and employees alike.
It is entirely normal to be concerned about ethical issues regarding the surveillance of employees’ activities; in fact, doing so shows that you recognize the importance of privacy.
Using the right employee monitoring software, you can conduct workplace monitoring in a way that protects your employees’ privacy while you reap the benefits of increased productivity and workflow.
Conclusion
Building transparency around employee monitoring may require some effort, but the end result in the form of increased productivity as well as employee trust will make it worth it. However, transparency can be a tricky deal, so you must follow the above-mentioned practices to make sure there are no misunderstandings surrounding employee monitoring at your workplace.