Employee monitoring and privacy in the workplace are mandatory practices for every business organization. They help business leaders improve security, ensure regulatory compliance, increase productivity, reduce administrative work, and make business processes more transparent.
However, they can also increase employee stress and cause your workforce to feel concerned about their privacy. Intrusive monitoring practices could decrease employees’ efficiency and lead to higher turnover.
Thankfully, the latest laws and regulations in modern employee monitoring help companies minimize administrative work and track work attendance to improve employees’ productivity while still being mindful of their privacy.
Workplace monitoring provides the means for corporate management to secure commercial secrets and sensitive corporate data by tracking critical workforce metrics such as work attendance, efficiency, and everyday activities.
It gives results only when provided mindfully and reasonably. With that in mind, let’s discuss the essential metrics to monitor and the best, non-intrusive practices for safe employee and workplace monitoring.
Vital Employee Metrics to Monitor
There are several ways to go about monitoring your workplace and employee performance. Before you choose a monitoring solution that works for your organization, you should consider the metrics you want to track.
Here are some ideas:
● Specific Metrics –
you may need to track metrics like employee vehicle mileage and location. However, that depends on your industry;
● Working Hours –
card access systems, surveillance cameras, and time tracking software tools help you calculate accurate work hours and set payroll accordingly;
● Corporate Dccounts and Devices –
constantly monitoring access to corporate accounts and devices is paramount for securing critical data and protection against cyber attacks. Applying privileged and authorized management solutions can help minimize risks;
● Computer Activity –
monitoring employee computer activity allows you to restrict their access to insecure and unsafe internet resources that may lead to exposing your systems to cyber attacks. Unrestricted access to the internet is a common cause of insider threats in the workplace. You can mitigate the risk by blocking access to specific websites, recording video and audio sessions, and taking screenshots;
● Employee Texts, Voicemails, and Emails –
monitoring employees’ personal correspondences is the most effective way to prevent insider threats. Prevent leakage of sensitive data by tracking communication channels such as instant messages, emails, and social media apps;
● Company Phones –
aside from threat prevention, recording phone conversations can bring additional benefits such as improved customer support.
Let’s move on to the best employee and workplace monitoring practices.
Non-intrusive workplace and employee practices
The best way to monitor your employees and workplace without disturbing privacy is to balance tracking essential metrics of workforce efficiency and ethics.
Aside from employee privacy, there’s also a matter of legality. Here are some practices for non-intrusive workplace monitoring that can help empower employee self-onboarding.
Create an Employee-friendly Monitoring Policy
Creating a transparent and comprehensive policy is vital for reaping mutual benefits when monitoring your workplace and staff. Inform your employees about how you plan to monitor their activities and give them reasons why it is necessary to do so.
Your employees should know that it’s all for protecting their sensitive data and making the workplace a more productive and friendly work environment. A policy should clearly state the workplace monitoring rules and what assets you plan to monitor so that your employees can adjust their daily practices accordingly.
Ensure Legal Compliance
Federal and state legislation regarding workplace monitoring and employee privacy are constantly changing. You should review the latest regulations from time to time to update your monitoring policies to avoid financial fines and legal problems.
Inform your Workforce
Talk to your employees about the essential workplace monitoring aspects and notify them about monitoring practices and systems. Provide education on the workplace monitoring terms and how it helps boost productivity and enhance security.
Provide training sessions to introduce your employees to the monitoring systems and give them insights into how they work. Ask for their feedback, provide a trial period, and list the benefits of a monitored workplace for their consideration.
Block Undesired Content
Blocking shady online resources, suspicious websites, porn sites, and social media is common practice within modern business organizations. It helps minimize the risk of cyber threats and maximize employees’ productivity during work hours.
Respect Employee Privacy
Monitoring your workplace with the utmost respect for employee privacy is probably the most important practice on our list. When tracking employee activity, you should only do it during work hours.
Monitor employee communications and emails only when there’s a reason to do it, such as a company’s bottom line. Whatever you do, avoid recording financial and bank account details. Workplace monitoring should be different from surveillance and only involve business-related activities and information.
Conclusion
Workplace monitoring can help ensure the highest level of employee productivity and data security. However, being mindful of privacy and ethics is critical to exercising the best monitoring practices.
Make sure your employees know about your monitoring efforts, choose non-intrusive tracking solutions, and conduct effective monitoring that’s unobtrusive for your workforce and beneficial for your business organization.
Employee-friendly, non-intrusive workplace monitoring can also help develop a healthy company culture that could take your business operation to the next level.