Employee monitoring software: to spy or to support?
As the world continues trudging on through the pandemic, tensions continue to rise. The distrust in the air is more tangible than ever, aimed at groups such as politicians, scientists, Big Tech, mainstream media, the Illuminati, The Man, and many more.
Distrust has also, in some cases, seeped into businesses. Amid the pandemic, as offices closed doors and dining tables became desks, companies needed to find new ways to check in with their staff.
In turn, many businesses jumped on the employee monitoring software bandwagon, a market which has experienced exponential growth since the pandemic's beginnings. Typical offerings track the hours worked by individual employees, while gathering data on their internet usage, productivity, and performance.
However, some software goes as far as to take screenshots or record videos of the screen. Other offerings even take pictures through the webcam. These features have been the subject of controversy and uproar as concerns surrounding privacy and GDPR are triggered.
Overall, the general consensus is that the implementation of these software is symptomatic of a boss that doesn't trust their employees. In some cases, yes, this may well be the case – but if you have a boss that micromanages, is profoundly paranoid, and threatens you with the analytics of their employee monitoring software, is it the product that is the problem, or is it the boss?
With insecure leaders spearheading their own ideas of employee monitoring software, it's giving products in this arena a bad name.
Not all employee monitoring software is about catching staff out. Rather, myriad offerings are available that are created with an employee-first mentality, rather than a boss-first, which during a pandemic, is more relevant than ever.
Chris Potts, Marketing Director at ANT Telecom, shared a particularly meaningful use case for monitoring software:
"In an office-based environment, companies would know if employees didn't turn up by their usual start time so someone would take notice and raise the alarm. But, with many employees now working from home, how would anyone know? Though perhaps employees may say they're in touch with colleagues daily, how long would it take for you to raise the alarm if communication stopped? Minutes? Hours? In some cases it could be days. The checks that we once took for granted to ensure peoples' safety are no longer in place – what do we now do to replace them?
"When the onus is placed on managers and supervisors to continually monitor employees, it can become a burden and a distraction from their usual role. And when people are busy, this is one of the first manual processes to fall by the wayside. An automated solution is far more effective and can incorporate all home workers, one that clearly shows that workers have at least started and ended their day safely. That way, if someone didn't check-in in the morning, a process could start immediately at 9am to find out what's happened, rather than waiting until a member of the family returns that evening or relying on someone internally raising the alarm."
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