For organizations and their employees, 2020 is a uniquely transformative and challenging year. Although this reality is expressed in many ways—including a global pandemic, a deep economic recession, perpetual social unrest and a litany of natural disasters—in the professional environment, it is most acutely observed in the rapid and wide-spread transition to remote work.
This change comes with a long list of benefits, and it looks like many organizations and employees are happy to continue the practice indefinitely.1 However, leaders know that everything from productivity to data privacy is also on the line. In response, many organizations are turning to employee-monitoring software to provide critical oversight in a distributed environment.
However, as one author notes. “The technology raises thorny privacy questions about where employers draw the line between maintaining productivity from a homebound workforce and creepy surveillance.”2
Indeed, employees subject to monitoring, especially when working remotely, are concerned about their personal privacy, and studies show that workers are “incredibly stressed out” by this novel dynamic.3
When not implemented correctly, monitoring initiatives can create catastrophic privacy violations, negatively impact workplace culture and diminish real productivity metrics in favor of generalized digital activity.
The solution is a privacy-first approach to employee monitoring that appropriately accommodates important priorities without compromising employee privacy. There are 3 ways every organization can start today.
Make Monitoring Specific
Many leaders want to know that their employees are working and working hard on the organization’s time. Therefore, monitoring initiatives often focus on generalized activity rather than specific tasks.
For instance, monitoring initiatives often collect data on mouse movement, application (app) activity, communication frequency and other activity-based metrics that do not inherently correspond to real-world outcomes.
However, fears of lazy employees, long lunches and Netflix binge sessions appear to be dramatically overblown. It is estimated that the average US employee has increased their workdays by nearly 3 hours since switching to remote work, and the results are not promising.4 Employees are demonstrating lower morale while being less productive. It is a classic lose-lose that every organization must avoid.
In response, organizations can monitor for specific outcomes rather than generalized activity, giving employees flexibility and discretion in how and when they do their jobs while maintaining oversight for project-based outcomes. In this way, employees can work with increased specificity, knowing exactly what makes them successful and aligning that outcome with enterprise goals.
Organizations can monitor for specific outcomes rather than generalized activity, giving employees flexibility and discretion in how and when they do their jobs while maintaining oversight for project-based outcomes.Monitoring for outcomes places trust in employees and does not require activity-based oversight to ensure that they are working, simultaneously empowering employees to boost productivity without violating their privacy through excessive data collection.
Make Monitoring Restrictive
Employees are not just concerned about what information is collected. Many are worried about how organizations are handling that information, asking question such as:
- Is personal data viewed and evaluated by IT personnel?
- Are managers receiving reports that include personal information?
- Can anyone see sensitive details?
Collected data should be heavily guarded, accessible only on a need-to-know basis. Fortunately, gains in artificial intelligence (AI) and automation technologies enable monitoring software to be extremely dynamic without requiring personnel to comb through employee data.
Therefore, privacy-first monitoring should include granular privacy controls, including:
- Auto-redacting personal information
- Autonomizing employee data whenever possible
- Restricting monitoring to specific apps, locations and times
Highly effective monitoring that respects employee privacy will collect as little data as possible, and it will restrict access to that information as much as possible.
Make Monitoring Collaborative
When monitoring is a secret or opaque policy, employees often feel their bosses are spying on them. However, workers are more receptive to these efforts when they are implemented in collaboration with the entire organization.
To achieve this, communication should be open, frequent and collaborative with team members at every level. In the process, be sure to convey:
- The purpose of monitoring
- The practice of monitoring
- The outcome of monitoring
- The long-term plan for collected information
By engaging all stakeholders in the process, leaders receive regular, real-time feedback about privacy concerns, allowing them to adjust protocols to account for these new perspectives.
When the reasons are justified and the process is collaborative, employees are surprisingly open to monitoring protocols and organizations will see better outcomes when everyone knows what is happening and why.
Conclusion
Employee monitoring is one of the primary ways organizations are staying connected to their team members, and it can provide significant benefits during a difficult time. However, the benefits do not outweigh egregious privacy concerns, something that employees unanimously agree is not a valid trade-off.
When organizations prioritize privacy from the very start, they ensure that monitoring remains a benefit and not a detraction. Most importantly, it is entirely possible to collect critical data and provide meaningful oversight without wholesale privacy violations. During this challenging and transformative time, it is more important than ever that organizations find meaningful ways to achieve both.
Endnotes
1 Brenan, M.; “U.S. Workers Discovering Affinity for Remote Work,” Gallup, 3 April 2020
2 Satariano, A.; “How My Boss Monitors Me While I Work From Home,” The New York Times, 6 May 2020
3 Harwell, D.; “Managers Turn to Surveillance Software, Always-On Webcams to Ensure Employees Are (Really) Working From Home,” The Washington Post, 30 April 2020
4 Davis, M.; J. Green; “Three Hours Longer, the Pandemic Workday Has Obliterated Work-Life Balance,” Bloomberg, 23 April 2020
Issac Kohen
Is vice president of research and development at Teramind, a leading global provider of employee monitoring, data loss prevention (DLP) and workplace productivity solutions. Follow him on Twitter @teramindco.