Tips to get your team on board with employee monitoring

Many people think employee monitoring is just about keeping an eye on people when they’re out of sight. But there are many other benefits – for employees, too. 

• Team transparency: Accurate, real-time records make it easier for everyone to stay on the same page.
• Confident compliance: Employee monitoring is essential for adhering to (and proving) legal, voluntary, and organizational compliance requirements.
• Useful feedback: Data-driven feedback creates a culture of continuous improvement.

Done right, employee monitoring is a highly effective tool. And it’s not just us saying that. Harvard Business Review studied the idea in 2023.

Here’s what they found:

“When supervisors used information obtained from monitoring as developmental feedback, employees continued to trust and maintain positive relationships with their supervisors. They also performed better in their jobs and engaged in fewer counterproductive behaviors.

This is backed by previous research that found that employee monitoring typically improves organizational outcomes if it’s intended and configured for development. On the other hand, performance declined, and trust fractured when managers used monitoring to control employees. 

The lessons for leaders are clear: consider the purpose of employee monitoring carefully, communicate it clearly, and use the information constructively. Do that consistently and your team will be unstoppable. 

1. Clarify the goal of employee monitoring

Organizations monitor activity for all kinds of reasons: 

• Improving compliance
• Enhancing productivity
• Optimizing workflows
• Preventing misconduct
• Informing strategic and resourcing decisions

Clarifying your organization’s purpose ensures everything that comes next – what you monitor, the tools you use, the data you collect and how it’s reported – is configured to make progress towards a meaningful goal.

Our tip: Set KPIs that link employee monitoring to organizational goals. For example, if you’re targeting SOC 2 compliance, make data handling integrity a team-level KPI. You can monitor this through employees’ application usage and website activity.

2. Communicate the benefits to employees

As well as the high-level benefits listed above, there are several reasons for employees to embrace workforce analytics:

• See how their work contributes to the big picture
• Enable flexibility by quashing managers’ qualms about remote work productivity 
• Discourage micromanagement 
• Track overtime and work-life balance issues for early burnout intervention
• Simplify timesheets and workday admin

Make these benefits clear in change management resources. Put them front and center in your employee monitoring policy. Most importantly, demonstrate them through your actions, decisions, and employee reward schemes.

Our tip: Use employee monitoring data to inform frequent, personalized feedback, and encourage employees to do the same. Turn employee monitoring data into a trusted information source.

We know policies are rarely the most exciting part of anyone’s workday. 

But enshrining the purpose, benefits, scope, and mechanisms of your employee monitoring system into a policy has several benefits:

• Minimizes the risk of misunderstandings
• Provides team leaders with talking points
• Helps with new employee onboarding
• Defines what is and isn’t monitored
• Gives regulators, clients, and partners confidence in your compliance controls
• Maps out the steps and requirements surrounding monitoring 

The best employee monitoring policies are clear, concise, and accessible. They’re available when employees and managers need to reference them and are updated regularly as regulations, policies, controls, and management systems evolve.

We’ve made it easy by creating a downloadable employee monitoring policy template.

Hit the link below to get your free template.