Employee Monitoring – 7 Best Practices

With the number of insider-related breaches rising every year, employee monitoring is becoming a common practice. While it is good to monitor your office staff,  it is worthwhile to explore best practices for monitoring your employees efficiently yet respectfully.

Employee monitoring – Pros and cons

Monitoring employees allows businesses not only to track employee’s activities and efficiency but to secure critical corporate data and commercial secrets. However, the flip side is that if information about employee monitoring software isn’t provided properly, employees may think of these measures as unpleasant surveillance.

The most obvious benefits of employee monitoring software are:

• Improved security
• Increased productivity
• Less administrative work
• Better business process transparency
• Regulatory compliance

Although employee monitoring software is beneficial both for businesses and staff, it also has several drawbacks. Here are the major drawbacks:

• Increased stress among employees
• Higher turnover
• Concerns about lack of privacy

Best practices for employee monitoring

The biggest challenge of proper employee monitoring software is keeping a balance between tracking essential metrics of staff productivity and doing it ethically. Moreover, employee monitoring is concerned with questions of legality and employee privacy.

Create a clear monitoring policy:- When monitoring your staff, it’s important to establish clear and transparent policies. You should explain how monitoring is conducted, what the purposes of monitoring are, and how you protect employee data. Such a policy should be written and should contain information about the assets under monitoring and rules for using those assets. 

Comply with legal requirements:- Pay attention to legislation that concerns employee monitoring. Don’t forget to review compliance practices and update your monitoring policy in case something changes. This way you can avoid legal problems and financial penalties.

Notify your employees:- Notifying employees about monitoring systems is mandatory in many countries. Be specific. Outline what you’re monitoring and why monitoring is important for both security and productivity. Introduce your employees to the system: explain how it works, list the benefits, arrange training, provide a trial period, and answer questions. Even if sending written notices to staff isn’t required by law, letting your employees know is a good practice and helps to create a healthy atmosphere in the company.

Block undesired content:- Blocking social media websites, porn sites, sites that contain hate speech, and various suspicious resources is a common practice within organizations. Doing so minimizes the risk of employees wasting work hours and accessing shadowy websites that can lead to cybersecurity incidents.

Practice monitoring, not surveillance:- Make sure to monitor only information directly related to your business. Employees already feel anxious about having their every move monitored. Your monitoring policy shouldn’t overreach and seem like spying. The main goal is to collect only the information necessary for your business.

Respect employee privacy:- Respect employee privacy by tracking user activity only during working hours. Consider monitoring personal employee emails and other forms of communication only when it directly impacts your bottom line. Also, avoid recording sensitive information like passwords and bank card details.

Use dedicated software:- Before choosing an employee monitoring tool, think of the metrics you need to track and search for the best software to meet your specific needs. Note that employee monitoring software should be unobtrusive and should not disturb your employees’ workflow. If your purpose is to ensure the security or achieve compliance, make sure your employees aren’t able to pause or terminate monitoring applications no matter how tech-savvy they may be. It’s also important to protect collected data from misuse by storing it in a secure location with limited controlled access.

Ekran System is a universal employee activity monitoring tool that can effectively monitor employees on corporate servers and desktops. Ekran System records everything users see on their screens along with mouse movements and relevant metadata in an advanced video format.