Employee Internet Monitoring Does More Harm Than Good

Employee monitoring has started to become a trend these days. Employers see it as a way of keeping their employees in check. While that may be true, as an employer or a supervisor or a manager, you have to think about your workforce as well.

Are they really okay with someone keeping tabs on their day-to-day activity? How do they feel about their privacy being invaded? Do they really like working for an always watching entity? We can assure you that the answer to all of these questions would be “no.”

Employees do know that they are at work and should keep their focus on the given tasks, but that cannot always happen. You cannot expect your employees to continuously work the whole time while they are in office for five days a week.

You can try to keep tabs on workplace communication, internet activity and penalize them for wasting time, but that won’t do you any favor. It will only aggravate them and cause problems, some which have been outlined below.

Excessive Turnover

Employees don’t like being watched. They prefer privacy. They may put up with monitoring to some extent, but when you are constantly watching their every move, they will begin to feel uneasy. Even if they keep their focus on the assigned tasks, the thought of being watched all the time will make them feel uncomfortable.

Sooner or later, they will get fed up with the routine and begin to hunt for a new job. Employees leaving the company is the worst thing that could happen and you, as an employer, must be well aware of the situation. Knowing the consequences, you need to stay off internet monitoring because it will only bring damage to your company.

Losing Trust

A company needs trust of its employees. Similarly, employees also want their employers to trust them. It is essential to understand that before deploying internet monitoring in the workplace, you must inform your workforce that you will be keeping tabs on their work activity. This will make them focus strictly on the given tasks and not spend leisure time at work.

When you make your employees realize that you don’t trust them, they will begin to lose trust in the company and eventually quit. Therefore, once you deploy employee internet monitoring tool, you are not only losing trust of your employees but also losing your staff.

Hiring a new employee can be a long, exhausting process and even then, you have no idea if the incoming person would fit in your company or not.  It’s important to save your company and your employees by not seeking help from a monitoring tool.

Monitoring Tools Should Be Last Resort

When lack of professionalism runs rampant in a company, you may believe that the best way to deal with it is through deploying employee monitoring tools. However, that’s not always the answer. There are multiple ways of motivating your employees and putting them back to work.

You can explain to them how bad things are at the moment and how their lack of effort is hurting the company. You can also seek help from a consulting firm which specializes in this area or set up an incentive system to reward the hard-working individuals.

If you go for employee internet monitoring tool straight away, then there is a high chance that you will lose even the last bit of professionalism that may have been left.

You must look for alternates before you decide to settle for a monitoring tool. If you have exhausted all of your options and your workforce still isn’t helping your company in any way, then opt for monitoring tools and email tracker. Their presence in any other situation will only do more harm than good.