A Simple Guide To Employee Monitoring Software

Let’s take a time leap to the year 2019. Yes, the same year in which the pandemic hit the world. Now, think about when the lockdown was declared across the globe and no one was allowed to leave their house. Everyone was furious about the situation and was taking immense care of themselves. In all this chaos, the remote work model, which was skeptical until then, proved to be a success and helped in maintaining productivity and business continuity.

Who would have thought that software like Microsoft Teams or Google Zoom would become the new conference rooms? The cherry on the cake was that this model enhanced productivity so much that many organizations still follow remote work culture. #AllHailTechnology

One of the software that gained popularity during the pandemic and is still being used is Employee Monitoring Software. This software allows organizations to measure productivity, track attendance, assess behavior, ensure security and collect proof of hours worked remotely. It also tracks web browsing and application usage, blocks certain content and applications, captures screenshots of user activity and can even generate insightful reports. Want to know more about it?

So, join us to know what Employee Monitoring Software is, from where it originated, its working, its benefits and more!
 

What Is Employee Monitoring Software?

For starters, let’s first dissect employee monitoring. It is a method of monitoring the activity of the employees. Businesses use it for a variety of purposes, including boosting employee engagement, preventing and detecting data breaches and optimizing inefficient workflows.

Employee Monitoring Software has shown greater potential for comprehensive workflow analytics and employee productivity coaching in the last few years. Do you know that this software can accomplish centralized management of employees across various locations?

Well, not only this but Employee Monitoring Software allows business administrators to view log entries over a network. This provides great help to companies that employ remote workers and hybrid teams.

Now, even Gru can monitor the work of Bob, Kevin, Stuart and all the other Minions by looking at his laptop, even if he is at her darling daughters' dance class!

Employee Monitoring Software is not a new term; it has been around for ages. Let’s crack the timeline of this software.
 

History Of Employee Monitoring Software

It all started in 1913, way back than you had thought, when Henry Ford used employee monitoring. At that time, punch cards and surveillance cameras were used in organizations to monitor employees.

With the First Industrial Revolution, the ability to produce, buy and hire has increased tremendously, resulting in the need for some kind of software to monitor employees. During the 19th century, free trade and globalization only added to the misery of business managers.

The Third Industrial Revolution bought computerization and automation into our workplaces. With this, distractions became digital too. It was difficult to tell who was actually working on the system and who was just reading a comic book. Another major issue that digitalization brought was that nearly all companies stored confidential data on the computer. This created a need for screen monitoring software. Thus, Employee Monitoring Software was born to tackle all these issues.

Today, with 70% of employees working remotely for at least once a week, Employee Monitoring Software has become even more popular. Not as popular as Gru, though!  

With that out of the way, Gru needs to know more about this software, so let’s move ahead and know the working of Employee Monitoring Software.

How Does Employee Monitoring Software Work?

 
Employee Monitoring Software doesn't require any rocket science to be operated. It simply works in three steps:
 

• Selecting And Downloading The Software

  First and foremost is selecting the right software for your organization. For this, you should consider the number of employees in your organization, your industry, hybrid, remote or in-work culture, etc. This might take some research as plenty of Employee Monitoring Software is available on the market. Well, after selecting the best one, download it to your computer.

• Monitoring Workforce Activity

  The software now will let you monitor the search history as well as the applications on your employees’ devices that are connected to the business network. Some of the software even lets you take screenshots of your employees' screens periodically for detailed monitoring – even if they are remotely connected to the enterprise network.

• Analyzing Trends For Increasing Employees’ Productivity

  Now that you have all the data, you can use this data for better project planning, resource allocation and budgeting. Performance monitoring and management made easy!

Simple, isn’t it? Gru always gets attracted to things that have a simple mechanism. Well, do you remember his signature freeze gun? Pulling a trigger and voila, frozen!

Well, it is time to chillax and learn about the benefits of Employee Monitoring Software.
 

Benefits Of Employee Monitoring Software

 
Gru is a self-centered man who doesn’t buy something until he has some strings attached. Remember the time when he adopted his daughters to get shrink rays from the evil Vector? We told you! He has reasons for doing things. Here are some reasons for him to get this software:
 

• Boosts Productivity

  Monitoring employees’ activities can enhance their productivity. When employees are aware that they are being monitored, they tend to be more diligent and productive.

• Better Utilization Of Resource

  Having Employee Monitoring Software in place allows you to see if you have allocated your resources effectively. It is common for some of your employees to have less work than their capacity without this software and vice-versa.

• Performance Assessment

  An effective performance tracking system can help your employees boost their output capacity by identifying what’s holding them back. You can identify time-consuming tasks and take appropriate actions to make them move quicker with this software.

• Ideal For Remote Teams

  With employee monitoring in place, it becomes feasible to supervise your remote workforce. Employee Monitoring Software provides you with a detailed report on how much time they spent on various websites and applications, thus, setting up a productive remote working environment.

Gru must have understood by now the importance of Employee Monitoring Software; however, if he is not convinced yet, here is a preview of the future it holds.
 

The Future Of Employee Monitoring Software

We expect that in the future workplace, Employee Monitoring Software will help track employees’ work with some technological improvements. Succession planning, predictive analysis and similar technologies will be integrated with this software for better data analysis.

Also, by integrating Artificial Intelligence (AI), machine learning, neural networks and sentiment analysis, this software will be able to detect employees’ behavior and anomalies. Such a development may be an effective method to safeguard the company from internal threats posed by its employees. It is also expected that accelerometers and special sensors that collect data on employee communication frequencies will enhance the efficiency of this software in the future. Sounds like that’s all Gru needs to steal the Moon again!
 

The End

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Employee Monitoring Software can help organizations improve productivity and reduce unplanned absences or churn. It also reduces time spent on training new employees and providing them with constructive feedback after their first few days on the job. The best part is there is more to it than just checking employees’ screens from time to time. It also provides many different data metrics and identifies any red flags that could indicate the employee is not performing up to the standard. We hope our guide has helped you and Gru to know about this superb software!