Do you want to know how to choose the best employee monitoring software for your business? Keep reading this article!
Two years ago, employee monitoring might have been a business practice most employees feared and despised, and business owners were reluctant to implement it. But now that the business world is changing rapidly, adjusting to Covid-19 restrictions and circumstances, investing in advanced software for employee monitoring has become necessary.
As the demand for these tracking tools keeps soaring, you must use them for all the right reasons to make the most of collected data and help your business grow.
So before you embark on the adventure of choosing the best employee monitoring app for your business, you need to ask yourself:
Why do I want to monitor employees’ activities?
Keep reading if the answer involves making your teams more productive and time-efficient.
However, if you want to use this software to track employees’ personal accounts during off-work hours, you may reconsider your intentions because they are unethical and potentially illegal.
Here you’ll find several steps to take before you invest in tracking workers, making sure you opt for an employee monitoring solution that will best meet your demands.
How to Choose the Best Employee Monitoring Software How to Choose the Best Employee Monitoring Software
Before choosing the employee monitoring software, you must keep these in mind. You need to
- Listen to your employees
- Check the features of the software
- Pick one with good UI and scaliability
- Consider your budget
Below, we will talk more about each point. So, without any further ado, let’s get into the list.
1) Talk to Your Employees Openly and Transparently 1) Talk to Your Employees Openly and Transparently
Being open and honest about deploying an employee monitoring system needs to be your top priority. All controversies regarding employee monitoring stem from the lack of transparency.
Furthermore, if you decide to track employees’ computers without telling them, you may cause a train of actions that can seriously affect your business and ruin your brand image.
According to statistics, more than 70% of American workers state that they would leave their companies if they found out that managers were tracking their activities behind their backs. On the other hand, those who decide to stay may feel overwhelmed by the entire process. This unnecessary pressure and stress may make them completely disengaged or overwork themselves, leading to burnout.
Besides having severe consequences to your employee’s physical and mental health, disengagement and burnout will destroy your productivity and harm your business.
For this reason, you must be open and honest about including employee monitoring software into your workflow.
Breaking the news may be the hardest step. Most employees find monitoring a serious and controversial issue, and they’ll have an array of questions. So avoid informing them about it via e-mail. Instead, try hosting a meeting where you’ll explain your reasons for computer activity tracking, focusing on benefits your employees may get from it.
Also, listen carefully to their concerns and objections and make suggestions. By showing them that they are heard and appreciated, you’ll gain their trust and consent much easier.
Also, you can create a clear Employee Monitoring Policy, defining what activities you intend to monitor, when, why, and how you’re going to use the tracking data. By doing this, you’ll justify using a productivity tracking app, setting clear expectations.
This will show your employee that you have no hidden agenda for monitoring, shedding their fear and doubts about the entire process.
2) Choose Software with Monitoring Features That Best Fit Your Goals? 2) Choose Software with Monitoring Features That Best Fit Your Goals?
In a market filled with feature-packed activity monitoring tools, you need to choose the right one for your business. So before you start canvassing the offer, define the goals you want to achieve by monitoring your teams.
Do you want to help your employees be more productive?
Or you need to automate an outdated payroll process and keep more accurate attendance records.
Nowadays, the most advanced monitoring tools can help you achieve your goals, providing you real-time insight into employees’ daily performance. So try to stay focused on your goals and choose the optimal solution to the issue you want to tackle.
A top-quality monitoring tool that offers various features doesn’t mean that you need to use them to get a clearer picture of your team performance or attendance. Instead of wasting time and money using tracking options that don’t provide meaningful results, focus on features that offer the most valuable insight.
2) Always Go For a User-Friendly Solution That is Easily Scalable 2) Always Go For a User-Friendly Solution That is Easily Scalable
When running a large company employing more than 1000 people, the last thing you need is monitoring software that requires complex installation. Instead, what you need is an easy-to-use productivity and time tracking solution that you can install across all your office-based and remote teams’ computers in a couple of clicks.
Also, you don’t want to pay an additional training so that employees can learn how to deal with complex and unintuitive dashboards.
The best productivity and time trackers have intuitive dashboards that can be navigated efficiently, accompanied by automatic time-tracking that doesn’t require manual action. This feature will minimize the risk of human error. Also, with automated time tracking, your employees won’t need to check in or out manually, disrupting their workflow.
When running a growing business, it’s essential to keep track of all onboarding employees and those leaving your company. This is a demanding task, especially in the era of remote and hybrid work. However, adding new employees or removing them from the employee monitoring system should not be painstaking or time-consuming.
Therefore, you need to look for an employee monitoring solution that is easily scalable and highly adaptable to changes. It will allow you to add new users or remove the accounts that don’t need to be monitored seamlessly.
This will allow you to focus on significant issues you need to tackle while scaling your business keeping track of your employees.
4) Choose the Monitoring Software That Fits Your Budget and Your Needs 4) Choose the Monitoring Software That Fits Your Budget and Your Needs
Investing in employee monitoring is the investment in your business efficiency and growth. Therefore you need to set the budget and stick to it. While large companies are well-aware of the importance of staying within set budgets, small business owners may easily overlook this fact. What they need is a solid strategy, leading to a reasonable investment.
So before you decide to buy a premium package containing numerous different features, look back on your goals, asking yourself:
What do you want to achieve by introducing an employee monitoring system?
Put all the benefits and costs that different monitoring options offer. Then, make sure that you choose the one that offers features you need the most, avoiding those that add up to the price without helping you achieve set goals.
Conclusion Conclusion
When you handle a team, you should be using employee monitoring software. You can easily track your team’s productivity, performance, and everything through it. You will see several free, premium, and freemium solutions if you check the internet.
But when you select software, keep these points in your mind.
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