The abrupt shift to remote work in 2020 has drastically changed the way people work and what employees expect. Post-pandemic, many companies have continued to allow employees to work from home, at least some of the time. But while business leaders have realized many of the benefits of a remote workforce (wider access to top talent, lower overhead costs, etc.), many still can’t shake their biggest fear: lack of of control.
Some managers worry that without the ability to stand on top of their employees’ shoulders, productivity will suffer. This paranoia is prevalent in every industry, despite the fact that many reliable studies show that productivity actually increases when employees have flexible work schedules.
But what if they’re just at home watching TV?
To ease their fears, some organizations are turning to employee surveillance tools to monitor what their people do at all hours of the workday. A study 2022 by PwC found that 95% of HR leaders have implemented new methods to track remote worker productivity or plan to do so in the future.
While various levels of employee monitoring have been performed for years in many industries, it’s a relatively new concept for knowledge workers, and many HR leaders are concerned about the effect it could have on the employee experience.
To see the real impact of tracking employee productivity, 15Five surveyed 1,000 managers and 1,000 employees across the United States, and well, we have some ideas.
Business is booming for employee productivity tracking software
With more people working from home, companies that traditionally didn’t feel the need to keep track of workers are investing in employee monitoring tools. global demand for employee monitoring software like desktop monitoring, keystroke logging and GPS location tracking more than doubled in 2020.
Some employers keep an eye on their employees by tracking when a person’s computer is up or down, taking random screenshots of their desktop, or even accessing employee webcams to make sure they’re sitting at their computers.
Our study revealed that employee monitoring software is the top method (54%) managers use to find out how productive employees are, followed by status reports (53%), digital records (44%), and peer reviews (42%). ).
Tracking every employee move shows a lack of trust
While more and more companies are adopting or considering adopting software to monitor employee activity, our data shows that it could be doing more harm than good when it comes to productivity. There also seems to be a fundamental disconnect between how managers and employees feel about it.
While 68% of managers believe productivity software improves performance, 72% of employees believe it has no impact or actually decreases performance. What is perhaps even more telling is that 20% of employees say they would look for a new job if their employer implemented productivity tracking software.
What many employers feel is a way to motivate people and encourage higher performance can seem like digital micromanagement to employees. He says that they are not trusted to do things without Big Brother watching.
Employee monitoring also has legal implications
Organizations implementing employee activity tracking tools need to be concerned not only with company culture and morale, but also with the legality of employee tracking.
Different federal, state, and local privacy laws regulate how employers can monitor their people, and many require employee consent. He Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) of 1986 allows business owners to monitor the verbal and written communications of their employees as long as they can present a legitimate business reason for doing so. However, additional monitoring (such as viewing an employee on their webcam) is only permitted if the employee consents.
By monitoring employee communications, employers also risk acquiring too much information. For example, if a manager reads an employee’s email about her recent medical appointment, she could commit a HIPAA violation if he reveals that private information to someone.
While employers have a lot of power over how much they are legally allowed to monitor their employees, exercising that power can be risky. The burden of protecting employee information falls on the employer. So if sensitive information were exposed, a company would be vulnerable to litigation by its employees.
Focus on results, not keystrokes
Employers using tracking software rely on a very limited view of productivity. They measure an employee’s productivity based on quantitative data, such as keystrokes, emails, or time spent on tasks. But productivity is much more complex, and the quality of work is just as important as the quantity, sometimes even more.
Employee productivity and performance are influenced by many other factors, including company culture, human resource policies, and managerial support (or lack thereof). Looking solely at tracking data to judge an employee’s ability to do a great job is doing them a disservice. Instead, looking at the employee’s ability to achieve long-term goals and positively impact their team is much more revealing than how long their bathroom breaks last.
As David Brodeur-Johnson, Principal Analyst and Employee Experience Research Leader at Forrester, told SHRM: “If you want to track the minutes, you’ll get the minutes, or if you want to track the keystrokes of keys, you will get the keystrokes. “But if you want to track results, you’ll get results.”
Choose performance (not surveillance) with 15Five
There is nothing wrong or wrong with wanting data on employee productivity. HR SaaS software solutions can be great tools for motivating your workforce, but not when used for spying.
HR software should help employees connect, align, and communicate, and the data collected should relate to engagement, goal setting, and performance. This is how you use technology to empower employees instead of causing them anxiety.
15Five offers a combination of subscription software, training, and consulting to enable strategic HR leaders to measure engagement and performance across the workflow, and then train managers to drive change from the bottom up.
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