With millions of Americans working from home during the coronavirus pandemic, businesses are looking for ways to ensure that their employees are in fact, working while out of office (Work From Home).
Being an IT partner to Businesses, we are often asked how we can assist with implementing ways to monitor employees and their activities during work hours.
Demand has surged for software that can monitor employees, with programs tracking the words we type, snapping pictures with employee’s computer cameras and giving managers rankings of who is spending too much time on Facebook or social media and not enough on Excel or business applications. Additionally, these software can take a snapshot of an employee’s screen every 10 minutes, count the number of words typed, websites visited, mouse activity and much more.
Though this technology is nothing new, it does raise privacy questions about where employers draw the line between maintaining productivity from a homebound work force and creepy surveillance.
Currently, there are many flourishing software companies that provide these products and services. They monitor the employee’s activities, some even equipped with GPS to track the movements of employees out of the office and in the field.
Though these software companies claim that their products are not intrusive because the employees are “aware” of the presence of the software and in many ways the analytics help both the employer and the employees to improve the productivity.
These are subscription based services and the price subscription starts around $10 per month per user. Some vendors offer additional bundles that come with the packages such as timesheet, Scheduling, invoicing, etc.
There are several questions to answer before considering getting a service or software like this and knowing it is a right solution for you:
- How many of your staff are working from home?
- Can you achieve productivity goals without installing the software?
- If you end up installing it, do your employees start resenting you and find a way to cheat the system?
- Can you try it on a limited scale, including yourself and check the level of intrusion?
As we are continuing to venture through uncharted “WFH” territories, is this the right decision for your company? At what cost to your company/employee rapport does this make it worthwhile?
Before the pandemic, large corporations such as Microsoft found out that employees working from home are 25% more productive than working from the office. We can all agree that we are in a new normal when it comes to work nowadays. So, should you implement software tracking your employees’ activities?
For most small companies, this isn’t the best idea. Oftentimes, it creates a rift or divide as employees feel they aren’t being trusted to do their work. Also not always the data they provide can accurately be interpreted. There are many factors that need to be taken to the account.
For more information or to see how we can assist you with our best work from home practices, feel free to give us a call at: 855-448-2178 or you can email us at: info@it21st.com.
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