What is Employee Monitoring?

Entrepreneurs, executives, and team leaders can reap a lot of rewards from employee monitoring software. Let’s dive into the most common benefits.

Less wasted time

The typical full-timer is paid for 8 hours of work each day—but he or she is wasting between 90 to 270 minutes. To see how much money this is costing you, let’s use an extremely simplified example.

Suppose you only have two employees. You’re paying both minimum wage, which in your state is $11 per hour. Every day, they together waste four hours: $44 down the drain. Using the standard 261-workday calendar, you’ll lose $114,484 per year. And that’s if you’ve only got two people on staff!

For a real-life example, look at Marissa Mayer’s 2013 decision to abolish Yahoo’s work-from-home option at Yahoo. Tracking how much time telecommuters spent on the company’s intranet revealed they were much less productive than their in-office peers.

With employee monitoring apps, you can completely eliminate this cash leak. For example, Hubstaff lets you pay people only for the time they’ve spent working—not a minute more or less.

Fewer errors

As this Chron article points out, having more insight into what your team members are doing lets you catch mistakes before they spiral out of control. Maybe you notice one of your employees has started working on a low-priority project, but you really need him to focus his efforts on a more timely or important task. You can shoot him a quick email or Slack message to say, “Hey! Can you please prioritize Project X over Project Y? We’re trying to ship by…”

Better employee insights

When a Dallas restaurant started using software to track each waiter’s activities, including their tickets, dishes, and drinks, management was primarily trying to tamp down employee theft.

However, the data also ended up revealing which waiters were the most productive. One of these waiter, Jim Sullivan, was rewarded with a management position when the chain opened up a new location.

Monitoring your employees doesn’t just identify the lowest performers—it also spotlights the highest performers (so you can promote them!)

Increased security

To see how employee monitoring makes your workplace safer, go back to the case in which tracking employee emails helped resolve a sexual harassment claim.

But that’s not the only way employee monitoring boosts security. It’s one of the best ways to make sure your field employees aren’t in danger; for example, "If an employee is supposed to be back at a certain time and nobody has heard from them," says Paul Randhawa, senior management analyst at Santa Clara Valley Water District in California, "we can look up on the GPS, see where they’re at and check up on their safety."

More transparency

Every manager struggles to keep their team in-sync; after all, ten heads are only better than two if every head is looking in the same direction. And as remote work becomes more and more common, the challenge of unifying a group of people has taken on a global dimension.

You might not’ve realized it, but employee monitoring can have a huge impact on your ability to connect everyone. If you’ve got access to data from each and every employee, you can get a high-level and granular view of what’s happening any time you want.

For example, if you know your graphic designer is taking longer than expected on an assignment, you can give the heads-up to your marketing freelancer, who can’t do her work until the graphic designer is done.

Better delegation

The better you understand each employee’s strengths and weaknesses, the better you can delegate. This blog post from Halogen Software really drives home why successful delegation is mission-critical: it fosters collaboration, develops your employees, makes you more productive, increases team trust, and lets you focus on the bigger picture.

None of those benefits are realized if you’re assigning tasks to the wrong people. When you know who struggles with what (and conversely, who shines at what), you can hand out tasks appropriately. Sometimes, that means giving the assignment to the person who’s least equipped to handle it, so he can improve. Sometimes (when there’s a time-crunch or the project is really important), that means giving it to the person who can do it in her sleep. You won’t be able to make either decision without great data—which an employee monitoring tool can provide.

Less administrative work

Administrative work is the bane of your existence, right? It’s horribly ineffective to spend your time on paperwork and other mundane chores rather than the problems of your business.

With the right employee monitoring app, however, you can automate a large portion of your administrative duties. Since software like Hubstaff keeps track of employee time down to the payment, you don’t have to do payroll: Just set up automatic payments. Plus, since you can customize settings for each worker to factor in different currencies, rates, and schedules, you won’t have to worry about keeping track of the details for every person you hire.

Corey Ciocchetti, Associate Professor of Business Ethics and Legal Studies at the University of Denver, writes, "It is more efficient to monitor employee hours via software as opposed to on paper as it reduces hours inflation and human errors."

Ciochetti also notes that “attendance software can also quickly and correctly calculate pay and other legally mandated work provisions under the Fair Labor Standards Act, Family and Medical Leave Act and various state laws.”

Finally, apps like Hubstaff offer flexible reporting options. When you need to pay taxes or invoice a client, you can generate the right report instantly—no more hunting down random files or spending hours in Excel.

When it comes to employee monitoring, there are several things you should be aware of.

First, there aren’t any federal laws in place that say private companies can’t monitor their employees. "For the most part, private employees have no right to privacy," Ciocchetti says.

Nonetheless, if you’re a private employer with federal contract that includes record-keeping obligates, or you’re a public company, your employee monitoring rights are restricted.

Also, despite the lack of federal laws, many states have established their own laws. Before you implement a system, check your state’s laws or consult a lawyer.

Finally, if someone has consented to being monitored, it’s legal.

Computer activity

If you’re interested in monitoring anything your employee does digitally (email, Web surfing, application use, etc.), then you’ve got a well-established legal right to do so. "Courts have found that employers are generally free to read employee email messages, as long as there's a valid business purpose for doing so," says this NOLO post.

When you own the computers and the network your employees are using, you don’t even need to tell them you’re keeping or reading their messages. However, if they’re bringing their personal computers to the office or working from home, establishing an email policy that basically says, “We reserve the right to store and open all electronic communication sent during work hours or from your work email address.”

We’d argue you should always tell your employees what you’re tracking—and why—but we’ll get to that more in a bit.

Phone calls

On employer-owned phones, you can listen to what your employees are saying. However, it should be for quality control purposes; maybe you’re ensuring customers are getting helpful responses, or clients are being treated respectfully.

Although there aren’t any federal protections for phone calls, there are some state ones. In California, for example, employers must indicate they’re recording by playing a beep or recorded message.

Also, none of these rules apply to personal calls. If an employer is listening to a phone call and he or she realizes it’s not business-related, the employer must hang up immediately.

Location

It’s legal to track employee location, whether you’re relying on a mobile app like Hubstaff or a GPS device in the car. But since there isn’t a lot of legal precedent, there are a couple measures you can take to stay on the safe side.

Step 1: Provide the tracking equipment. There’s always a lower expectation of privacy when an employee is using company property, rather than personal. So, if you’re going to track a person via smartphone, it’d be wise to pay for the phone.

Step 2: Ask for the employee’s consent. Once you’ve gotten approval from the person you’re monitoring, you don’t have to worry about legal issues: their “yes” supersedes the other concerns.

Step 3: Don’t monitor non-business activity. Employees do have a reasonable expectation of privacy when they’re off-the-clock, meaning you can’t track their location when they’re not working.

To learn more, take a look at this ebook covering the legal ins and outs of using employee monitoring software.

Like we said, employee monitoring comes with its fair share of risks. Fortunately, following a couple of general guidelines will help you avoid every single one. In fact, you can even get your employees enthusiastic about using one of these systems.

Getting buy-in

You’re the boss, so you don’t need your team’s permission to start using a new system. But getting it will make your life way easier: Your employees will be much more likely to adopt a system they pre-approved, and you won’t suffer the dip in trust that many employee monitoring systems can cause.

So, how do you get buy-in? First, prepare a presentation for your workers. Maybe that’s a simple slide deck, or maybe you hold an all-hands Skype call. In any case, you should have a detailed explanation of how this system will improve the business, and more importantly, how it will help your workers.

It’s also a good idea to bring two or three different options to the table and ask your employees to vote. This way, they’ll feel like they’re choosing the system (rather than having it forced upon them). For example, you might say, "We’re looking at using Hubstaff or Time Doctor—take a look at each platform, and tell us which one you’d prefer."

Explaining the benefits

A convincing presentation will show your audience employee monitoring isn’t just good for you, it’s good for them as well.

Here are some ideas to get you started:

• With a tool like Hubstaff, they’ll never be under-paid again.
• They’ll also be paid automatically, without having to submit an invoice. (Hubstaff integrates with PayPal, Payoneer, QuickBooks, and more; many other software systems offer automatic payment as well)
• They’ll get insights into their own work patterns, which’ll make them more productive.
  (See what our own remote team says about their experience using Hubstaff!)
• They won’t have to turn in tedious daily or weekly reports.
• They’ll get more autonomy — since managers will always be up-to-date, they won’t always be checking in.
• They’ll have more efficient team members. It’s always frustrating to work with people who don’t pull their weight, and an employee monitoring system will completely eliminate that.
• They’ll have extra motivation to focus: knowing you get paid for minutes worked, not just minutes at work, is a great incentive to stop procrastinating.
• They’ll get more recognition. As in the case of Jim Sullivan, employee monitoring shows which team members are excelling.

Having a written policy

After your employees have signed off on a tool, it’s time to write out your official policy. Nathan Watson of the Indiana University School of Law says the vast majority of businesses that monitor employees provide notice to those employees.

Having a public policy shouldn’t be an issue if your employees voted for it; however, if you’re considering using a covert time tracking tool (that is, using a program secretly), you might reconsider. Not only is it the right thing to do, but it’ll help you avoid legal issues and allow your employees to get maximum benefit from the system.

There are several characteristics of a good policy. It should:

1. Be written in plain language, without any jargon or obfuscating terms
2. Cover each type of monitoring being used, how regularly the monitoring will take place, the kind of information being collected, what will be done with that information, and how long that information will be stored
3. Require each employee to acknowledge he or she has read it
4. Be distributed or published before the employee monitoring has taken place
5. Include any relevant legal provisions
6. Address what employees should do if they feel the policy is being violated, or if they have suggestions to improve it (We recommend setting up a Google Forms or Typeform survey so they can anonymously provide feedback)

The first feature—plain language—is especially important. If you hide behind legal mumbo-jumbo, your employees will feel like you’re trying to pull one over on them. If you find yourself using unnecessarily abstract or vague terms, rewrite the policy to make it more human.

Bad:

The Company has the capability to access, review, copy and delete any messages sent, received or stored on the email system. The Company reserves the right to access, review, copy D- 10 or delete all such messages for any purpose and to disclose them to any party (inside or outside the Company) it deems appropriate.

Good:

To make sure nothing sketchy is happening via email (which unfortunately is something we have to worry about), our company uses software that lets us open, read, copy, and delete any message that goes through the email system. (That means any message that an employee has sent, received, or saved on the system.) We can also share these emails with anyone (whether they work at this company or not). Of course, we’d need a good reason to do so—for example, if one of our employees shared a trade secret, we’d want to show the relevant message to our lawyer.

Driving adoption

Once you’ve gotten support from your team and created and handed out a written policy, you can move forward with implementation.

Let’s face it: change is hard, and it’s even harder when you’re trying to convince employees to willingly be monitored. Anything you can do to facilitate the transition is worth doing.

Hold training sessions

Are you using new software? Train your employees how to use it. Try to make the sessions fun and engaging. Maybe you’re running a co-located team, so take everyone out to dinner when you’re done. Or, your team is remote, so you promise Starbucks gift cards to the five team members who participate the most during the webinar.

Giving everyone a tutorial will show them how easy the app is to run, and it’ll definitely mitigate some of the resistance to adoption.

Check out these 12 tips for an effective employee training program.

Solicit feedback

Your employees will feel much more comfortable with the new system if you prove you’re open to comments and suggestions. As a matter of fact, you should go out of your way to get your workers’ feedback—having this level of transparency definitely counteracts any worries they may have that you don’t trust them or have their best interests in mind.

Luckily, you’ve got plenty of opportunities to ask individuals what they think:

• When you’re onboarding them
• When you (or their direct manager) meets with them for a check-in
• When you’re having a company status meeting
• When you’re having a normal conversation and the time feels right

Here’s a couple different ways to frame your questions:

• (Name), I’d love to know your thoughts on the system we’ve set in place. If you were me, what would you change? Why?
• How could we improve the system? What’s your biggest pain point?
• Is there anything about the system that’s surprised you—both for better or for worse?
• What do you least like about it? What do you most like?
• Do you feel like this system benefits both the team’s operations and your own work?
• How could I do a better job conveying why this system is important and even essential?

Listening to feedback

Once you’ve gotten employee feedback, it’s really important to respond with gratitude and composure—even if the person has said something you don’t agree with. Everyone will be watching to see how you react, so if you don’t get defensive, you’ll win their trust and confidence. Instead, ask for an alternative.

Let’s say a freelancer says he doesn’t like having his productivity level quantified, since it makes him feel anxious.

You could respond, "Okay, I definitely understand that. Do you have any suggestions on how we can keep track of how much work you’re doing, so we can pay you accurately?"

Not only does this answer show you’re open-minded, but you’re getting the employee to participate in the process and see things from your perspective. And hey, if he has a different, better idea, then everyone wins!

When employees say they like an aspect of the system (for example, Hubstaff’s team members love the autonomy the software provides), thank them for their feedback and ask if there’s any way you could make that benefit even more visible.

For example, you might reply, “That’s so great to hear—actually, one of the reasons we started using this program was to give everyone more freedom in their day-to-day work. Just out of curiosity, is there any way we could increase autonomy even more?”

With this approach, you’ll be able to show even the least enthusiastic employees that employee monitoring helps everyone succeed.

Final Thoughts

Now, you know the various types of employee monitoring, its pros and cons, which type to use within your organization, how to stay within the law, what to consider about specific software, and how to get your workers on-board.

We hope you’re as excited as we are—not only will a good employee monitoring system save you an incredible amount of money in regained productivity, but it’ll also dramatically improve your team’s work dynamic, show you who deserves a raise or promotion, and free up the time you normally spend on administrative tasks for more move-the-needle projects.