Employers are increasingly using employee monitoring to monitor workers’ productivity, work, and ongoing projects. Companies use a range of digital tools to achieve this. Employee monitoring is a broad word that encompasses everything from tracking attendance to evaluating behavior to evaluating productivity to enforcing security to gathering proof of work to full surveillance.
What is an Employee Monitoring Software?
Employers can monitor their employees’ actions by using employee monitoring software to track their use of applications and other activities. This program runs in the background and constantly collects in-depth information about the employee’s computer-related work activities. Without violating the employee’s privacy, this software records all computer usage by the employee.
The data that is collected is used to examine a variety of factors, including staff attendance, software and internet usage, and more. These robust programs even record the keystrokes that employees make on the keyboard.
Features of Employee Monitoring tools
Due to the rapid advancement of technology, work is now performed in offices, homes, and other public spaces. These days, working from home is very widespread. Additionally, there has been a rise in the number of devices utilized for work, including laptops and portable devices (like smartphones and tablets).
Employee Monitoring Tools offer a variety of capabilities to stay consistent with these developments.
- Monitoring Internet and Emails:
When utilized properly and effectively, the Internet is among the most important tools for completing tasks more efficiently. The URLs, title bars, and amount of time spent on each website are recorded by internet tracking. The main goal is to examine how the net is used at work and determine what can be done to make the process go more smoothly.
Email is the most widely used form of communication in almost all businesses. Emails are regarded as official documents under the law. Therefore, it becomes crucial for businesses to keep an eye on official communications in order to lower the danger of lawsuits and other mishaps.
- Computer Activities:
This capability will monitor the programs running on the local desktop or laptop computers, similar to Internet monitoring. With the help of the data gathered, it is possible to determine how productively time has been utilized, which programs are most frequently used, and where the unproductive hours were spent.
- Keystroke logging:
This would sequentially record each key that the employee pressed. This function must only be used in locations requiring an extremely high level of surveillance because it is exceedingly sensitive. In some cases, this could result in an invasion of the employees’ privacy because they might be entering private information like their social security number, banking details, or even a password.
- GPS Tracking:
The company’s assets, such as delivery vehicles, smartphones, and laptops, can be tracked and monitored using GPS tracking. This could be useful for safety reasons, navigation, and the recovery of stolen or lost equipment.
- Generation of Reports:
It offers logs that present information on each activity in the form of graphs and charts. Users can examine the top list of recently visited websites in graphical form.
- Screenshots:
The monitoring software can take screenshots of the employee’s screen at predetermined intervals. This aids in comprehending the employees’ work habits and examines the amount of time spent using various applications. This can also be used to determine whether a team member is struggling at any particular stage of the workflow, which can then be addressed to move things along more quickly.