Today, automated personnel control systems are becoming increasingly popular with companies’ management. Any manager wants his subordinates to do work tasks at their workplaces, not unrelated activities or playing computer games.
Monitoring of employees activities has always been there. However, if earlier this was often limited only to time tracking of their arrival and leaving the workplace, today a set of software tools is used which can include even programs for listening to telephone conversations and reading emails of the persons under control. Since most office workers are working on a computer, such systems are installed directly on their PCs.
Each manager knows that without staff monitoring, it is difficult to increase their productivity and protect the company from leakage of information. Naturally, the team might not like some ways of such monitoring, because people do not like to be spied on, as well as excessive interference into their personal space.
Staff Monitoring Program: Yaware.Timetracker
Today, the following methods are used to track staff activities without invading their personal space:
- surveillance cameras;
- record of being late, as well as any staff behavior by specially assigned people;
- installation of special software on PCs allowing monitoring personnel activity right at the workplace
Use of these methods ensures noninterference into employees’ personal life. To choose the most advantageous option, the management should analyze the activity of the company as a whole, as well as the workload of particular workplaces. In many cases, it is the automated monitoring method that is the most effective. Moreover, it is possible to combine the above methods within a company.
Yaware.Timetracker is an efficient, versatile, and easy computer monitoring system suitable for any company. It takes into account what the employees are doing at their workplaces with computers. In addition to protecting company’s private data, the software assesses the performance of each team member based on the information collected about them.
This IT product helps to easily find out what websites the employee visited, what requests they made, etc. Then, this data are collected in special reports. Studying them, the manager will be able to find out which of his subordinates was working, and who logged in social networks or watched videos. Having learned what a particular employee is doing, the manager can use disciplinary punishment or reward with material incentives.
However, despite the obvious advantages of such work time monitoring system, there are always staff members who do not like such innovations. They think that the time logging software interferes with their personal space, collecting information about their actions and preferences without permission.
Pros and Cons of Automated Monitoring
Although staff monitoring is increasingly necessary in business, excessive control can have negative consequences. Its disadvantages include:
- Decrease motivation. Is it necessary for an employee to improve performance if the supervisor still checks everything and corrects if necessary? With this approach, the team members lose their motivation to improve their skills.
- Loss of incentive by management. The analysis of the monitoring reports can take a lot of time, so that sometimes there is no time to solve more important work-related tasks. This can lead to deterioration of management results.
- Decrease of productivity in various departments of the company. If the management is mainly occupied with the control activities, then it has no time for development of the company. Together with this, the team spends too much time on all sorts of activities, not directly involved in improving their own efficiency.
The question arises, how to control work activities of the team in such a way that it is beneficial and not harmful?
Yaware.Timetracker is developed to bring maximum advantages to both management and ordinary employees. But still, the management should avoid the following mistakes:
- Not understanding the process being controlled. For example, it is better if a person, who understands the technical side of work, monitors it, and not an ordinary non-related specialist.
- Focus on mistakes. If employees know only about their mistakes, then it is quite likely that they will soon refuse to work for the company. Therefore, the workplace monitoring in the company should not cross the established boundaries. Do not start it before the due time. Be sure to give a positive review to those employees who successfully coped with the job or created an innovation.
- Hidden or open monitoring should not cause obvious discomfort to the staff. When focusing your attention on minor violations, you add to the atmosphere of total surveillance.
- Nominal monitoring. If the manager doesn’t have clear requirements for work and only to promises to control it, this will not cause an increase in staff productivity.
If the managers observe the above principles, the employee time tracking program will surely bring a positive result, increasing the productivity and profit of any company.
