How Can Employers Monitor Productivity and Security Without Invading Employees’ Privacy?
Dan Belcher
Setting Clear Goals and Expectations
Laying out clear targets for employees makes it easier to track how folks are doing without getting all up in their business. Instead of breathing down their necks, just set specific goals that they need to hit in their roles. That way, you can focus on whether they’re completing the work rather than how exactly they spend their days.
Having defined metrics gives everyone transparency around expectations – employees know what they need to achieve, and managers know what to measure. This helps create a results-focused culture that cares more about people actually getting stuff done versus nitpicking their personal workflows.
Employees still have freedom in how they work, but their progress check-ins are tied directly to things that affect the success of the company, not random productivity scores. Seems like a good way to monitor job performance without overstepping work-life boundaries.
Use Time Tracker Apps
Time tracker apps show how people allocate work hours across different tasks without drilling into what they’re working on. The focus is on overall productivity flow, not personally monitoring every web page and document.
[They] help ensure stuff gets done, and employees can feel trusted to do their jobs, not micromanaged.
Mervyn O’Callaghan
Tim Hopfinger Lee
Keystroke Counter
A keystroke counter is a possible solution. It checks keyboard and mouse activity without getting into personal data. All the other options require more than just checking your mouse or keyboard activity. Some will take random screenshots every ten minutes while some might offer full-time access. But honestly, if you’re being this considerate, you might as well just not monitor your employees.
Communicate With Employees
It is the employers duty to monitor the performance of staff members. This raises the question, how? They might object to what they perceive to be a violation of privacy if you decide to deploy monitoring software without first informing them of its existence.
On the other hand, the majority of individuals will not object to being monitored if you inform them about it in advance and ask for their consent.
In order to avoid any unpleasant feelings in the future, it is a good idea to establish a procedure for cases in which employees have questions or reservations regarding the information that they discover in their monitoring reports.
Specifically, you should make sure that they are aware that there is nothing shady going on here and that this is all a part of your attempt to get them back to work as fast as possible.
Eran Mizrahi
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