While remote work presents many benefits, it has also created challenges, particularly due to the lack of visibility you have over your employees—at least physically. While you hope that trust is enough to carry your business, hope is not a plan for employee productivity. You’ll also need tools and methods to monitor your team so you can hold them accountable. We’re here to deliver the fix to your employee productivity needs.
Breaking Down Time Theft
You might wonder what your team is actually doing during their workday, and whether they are spending their time doing the chores, walking the dog, or even working for another company while on the clock for their job with your business. How much more productive do you think they would be if they knew someone was watching?
This concept, called the Hawthorne Effect, was conceptualized in the 1920s by observing factory workers. They were more productive with the lights on due to the fact that they could be observed by their supervisors. The knowledge that someone can see them encourages them to perform at a higher level. You can apply this idea to your own remote workers.
How Modern Technology Can Function Like Factory Lights
One of the most important things you, as a business owner, need to be able to do is check on operations. You should have the power to look into a team member’s performance to see if they are pulling their weight.
Here are some ideas for what to check:
- Login/Logout audits - If your employees are clocking in and out and recording time on their timesheets, you can check to see if it matches up with their logins.
- App usage - You can check to see how much time your team spends on business-related applications. For example, you can check to see how much time they spend on Netflix or YouTube to get an idea of who’s slacking off.
- Access logs - There’s no real reason anyone should be accessing a database outside of work hours, and definitely not to download large quantities of data. Access log alerts can identify attempts like this.
- Idle alerts - If a team member hasn’t touched their work device for a certain amount of time, your systems should be able to let you know.
Be Mindful and Communicative About Monitoring
Ultimately, these tools and measures exist to protect your business. You’re not trying to catch someone doing something wrong; you’re monitoring with security at top of mind. These tools will help you catch a hacker as they infiltrate your network, but they also double as a productivity monitor. We don’t think anyone would argue with the fact that you have a responsibility to your company to protect it.
Addressing Invasions of Privacy
There are some employees who will not appreciate your ever-watchful eyes scrutinizing their every move. While most of this pushback should diminish over time as your methods become accepted, it’s important to note that those who are actually doing their best shouldn’t have a problem with your practices. It’s only those who aren’t doing what they should who will speak out.
If you want to implement employee monitoring without harming your team’s morale, we have the following recommendations.
Employee Monitoring Done the Right Way
First thing’s first, you’ll want to be careful with your approach to monitoring. Understand that this begins at the policy level, and therefore, you’ll want to write down your plan:
Update the Employee Handbook
If you’re making an organizational change, you want to document it. From a legality standpoint, you should notify your team that there are monitoring tools in place. Consider your acceptable use policy as the ideal location to state this.
Prioritize Major Problems
Some businesses will use monitoring tools as a way to micromanage their team and obsess over wasted time. If you want someone to worry about, consider those whose time cards are short on hours. They’re the ones you should consider looking into.
Base Most of Your Decisions On Data
In order to avoid issues with wrongful termination, consider communicating with your team before making any hasty decisions. Tell your team members you’ve noticed a concerning pattern and you would like to address it. If you ultimately do need to consider termination, you’ll then have grounds to do so.
Want Help With Monitoring?
Admittedly, it’s a lot to monitor your team to ensure they’re being productive, let alone implementing the tech to make it all happen. Let COMPANYNAME help you out with these efforts. Learn more about the tools that can keep your business productive by calling us today at PHONENUMBER.