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What You Need to Know About Employee Monitoring

Published on: March 1st, 2019

The best way to ensure your business data is safe is to have reliable security practices in place. With the amount of insider incidents increasing, there’s clearly a need for employee monitoring. While every company may not have a policy in place already, it’s never too late to re-evaluate and increase your cybersecurity.

What is Employee Monitoring?

Employee monitoring is the practice of tracking employee engagement, productivity, and more. Monitoring internet usage is the most common type of employee monitoring, while some companies also monitor emails, phone calls, voicemails, location, and more.

The intention of employee monitoring is to prevent workers from sharing company information. If you do find an employee has shared company data, you can address the mistake before it negatively affects the business. Cybersecurity is the number one reason businesses monitor their employees’ activities.

Is Employee Monitoring Legal?

While monitoring your employees’ actions is helpful, it can come close to crossing the line of privacy. Before implementing an employee monitoring system, check your state’s laws to see what practices are legal.

In short, if an employee gives consent to be monitored, it’s legal. If your company owns the computers and other technology your employees use, you’re safe to monitor their digital activity. However, if your employees use their own equipment, monitoring their actions can be more difficult. In those cases, it may be best to establish an email policy to reserve the right to monitor emails sent and received during work hours using a work email address. Whether you keep a close eye on employee activity or are more flexible, be sure to be up-front about your company policy and consider creating onboarding documents for new employees so they know what to expect from the beginning.

Why Do I Need to Monitor My Employees?

Monitoring your employees isn’t something every company needs to do, however, it can be extremely beneficial if implemented correctly. Some of the most common benefits of employee monitoring include:

• Increased productivity
• Increased security of company data
• Increased transparency
• Insight to the highest and lowest performing employees
• Decreased errors and mistakes

Tracking how productive your employees are can reveal your lowest and highest performers and can help determine who deserves a promotion when the time comes. From cutting down the wasted time to increasing security, the advantages of tracking employees’ activities far outweigh the disadvantages.

Along with monitoring your employees, it’s imperative that employees receive cybersecurity training to further protect your company’s data, too.

How Do I Monitor My Employees?

Employee monitoring is extremely easy to set up once legal concerns have been addressed and employees have been notified. Luckily, there are plenty of employee monitoring systems to choose from. Software such as Toggl, a time-logging system, can help you determine how much time your employees are dedicating to their work. Other systems, such as Hubstaff, log time and activity to see exactly what your employees are working on and for how long. Implementing a system for employee monitoring can improve your business and avoid liabilities if done correctly.

The experts at Computer Troubleshooters are ready to answer any questions and help you decide and implement the best method to use for an employee monitoring system. Contact your local office to increase your business’ cybersecurity with an effective plan for you.