Employee Monitoring: Do You Need It? (Part 2)

We posted more of the pros on employee monitoring last week, showing you why you may need a monitoring system for your company. In today’s article, we will discuss about the cons and what you may need to be aware of.

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1. Privacy Concerns

Employee monitoring comes with its fair share of potential privacy concerns. Most employees may be worried that you’re monitoring even their non-work hours. They fear that their private conversations are being recorded and that their passwords are at risk.

Some countries have very strict laws when it comes to monitoring, and employers must abide by them. Unfortunately, the case is that some don’t, and that same laws do have loopholes which can be easily used to the employer’s advantage. And some employers even monitor their employees without them knowing.

2. Ethics of Employee Monitoring

Spying on employees or monitoring their computer activity may cause ethical problems. To what extent employers can track their employees? What will the employers use the data for? Are employees bank account details protected?

3. Potential Trust Breakdowns

An installation of monitoring system may indicate that employers do not trust their employees. Employees will feel like all their prior work counts for nothing and that you need to spy on them because you still doubt their commitment. This will lead to a toxic work environment, diminished employee morale and potentially higher employee turnover!

4. Who will watch the watchers?

You’ve got people who are watching the data being collected, but who is watching the people that monitor the employees and the data? Eventually there will need to be a person or in larger cases of employee monitoring, a team that oversees the implementation of standards while understanding their position’s power and how it can lead to abuses.

 

Employers should start monitoring ONLY after you have got your employees’ consent to do so. The best way to do this is to explain why are you monitoring them and have them sign a form agreeing to employee monitoring. Let them know that this is now a standard company policy. This isn’t personal or targeted at them – everyone in your company – from junior employees to executive leadership are using it. Choose monitoring software that track only the time your employees spent on work and restrict the websites where they can access during working hours, this may reduce the privacy concerns from your employees. Lastly, employee monitoring may enhance your business productivity but trust is still the key to success!

 

Reference:

1.     Pros and Cons of Employee Monitoring: Does It Increase Productivity? https://biz30.timedoctor.com/

2.     The 7 Pros and Cons of Employee Monitoring https://www.employmentcrossing.com/