What Are Your Competitors Doing to Monitor Employee Productivity?

In the remote-working age, organizations are getting jumpy about productivity, but they don’t have to be. Businesses are investing in employee productivity monitoring solutions that allow staff the flexibility they seek while providing the accountability managers need. The key is choosing a tool that focuses on driving success and improving productivity rather than identifying negatives. 

According to a recent study, around 80% of organizations are using monitoring software to better understand employee activity. These are your competitors, partners, and clients - if they’re relying on Employee Productivity Monitoring (EPM), should you?

How to Get Employee Productivity Monitoring Right

The short answer to that question is - it depends. Having readily accessible data about how your team works means you can help keep them on track, identify challenges before they become problems, and deal with dips in productivity before they impact performance. But not all EPM solutions are equal or equally effective.

Some solutions (such as keystroke monitoring) are so invasive that they have the opposite effect - dampening productivity rather than increasing it. It’s important to choose the right solution and introduce it the right way so you can maintain a positive relationship with your employees while collecting the data you need to assess their daily contributions and identify opportunities for improvement.

Be Transparent And Communicate Your Monitoring Strategy

Introducing an EPM solution can’t be rushed. This is a big step for your employees and they should be included in the process from the outset. Make sure you’re transparent with whatever tools you’re using and communicate clearly with employees about what your EPM system will involve. Explain the reasoning behind it and train employees so they understand exactly how it will work.

Be ready for negative feedback and ensure managers are briefed on allaying employee fears around privacy and workload.

Assess Your Goals

The obvious motive for introducing employee monitoring is productivity, but drill down into what exactly that means - are you doing it purely as a means of surveillance or as part of a long-term strategy for company growth?

If you’re adopting EPM software simply so you can see what your employees are doing at any given moment, your team will quickly get the message that they can’t be trusted. In this situation, any monitoring will backfire - making your team less productive as they become disengaged and unmotivated.

Employee monitoring has to put the employee first. Reframe your EPM to promote employee development - your EPM platform should allow you to identify employees who are struggling with their workload and/or headed for burnout. It should also give managers the data they need to effectively delegate, ensuring your star performers aren’t given more than they can handle.

With an effective EPM in place, managers are never taken by surprise. They know what their employees need to be successful - training, support, or a lighter workload - and can act proactively rather than waiting for problems to arise. In this way, employee success becomes a top priority for the entire organization.

Pick The Right EPM Solution

There are lots of options when it comes to productivity software, but some can actually hinder productivity rather than increase it. 

The more invasive your monitoring, the more likely it is to decrease productivity. Staff will become resentful and, feeling watched, won’t offer their best work. Invasive EPM solutions will also make it more difficult to hire and retain talent.

Managers should avoid platforms that monitor keystrokes or watch an employee’s every movement online. Instead, choose a solution that zeroes in on the data you need rather than taking a broad approach that risks violating your employee’s privacy and personal data.

Prodoscore only monitors how employees use business applications - it doesn’t have access to any personal data or monitor website visits, for example. Instead, the platform tracks how team members are interacting with your company’s business applications, such as your CRM, office suite, project management platforms, phone system, etc.

In this way, Prodoscore builds an accurate, real-time, picture of how your employees work, rather than what they’re doing online. Prodoscore gives managers the visibility they need without being intrusive or putting employees under constant surveillance.

Collected in real-time, the data is presented in a single dashboard so managers can see at a glance their team and individual productivity scores. By tracking these scores over time, Prodoscore helps identify key trends and patterns so employers can promptly deal with any issues and plan ahead for times when productivity wanes, such as the holiday season.

Prodoscore offers your employees the flexibility they want while delivering the accountability managers need.