Privacy has become a major issue in the digital era. In the past couple of years, we’ve witnessed new policies such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the EU, and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), as well as data breaches and hacks from small and large businesses. The Cambridge Analytica scandal made us all rethink how we value privacy, and what we share online.
The rise of employee monitoring software also made employees rethink their privacy at work and you can visit workpuls.com for more details. While it’s safe to believe that employees can expect some level of privacy, that’s usually not the case as companies can monitor the email and browser activity of their employees without specific software.
In this article, we’ll explore how you can use employee monitoring software without harming your employees’ privacy. Here, you can learn why the process is important, how it can improve your business, and how it will affect the quality of the work of your team.
Monitor Only What’s Important
The use of monitoring software implies there’s a problem you’re hoping it will solve, or you want to improve your business in a specific way. So, if your goal is to prevent time theft at work, you should be using the clock in/out feature, as well as break time and website and app monitoring. In this case, it’s too much to take screenshots or track time on projects and tasks.
You get the gits, you should collect and analyze the data that is closely related to your bottom line. Everything else has to go because you’ll be collecting and keeping a bunch of data you don’t actually need or use, and you’ll need more policies and procedures in place to keep that data safe. And if you go into analyzing, you’ll just waste a lot of time on nothing.
With this process, you won’t be breaching any privacy, but you will still be able to know what your team is doing, how much time they spend on their actual tasks, and what they do when they need to take a break. Note that just because you use trackers on the projects, you should never expect 100% productivity on all the screenshots. It is normal for your team to take breaks, and if everything is 100% it can mean that they are using a counter-software to fake the data.
Make Sure You Aren’t Collecting Sensitive Data
Under sensitive data, you can classify passwords, bank account details, social news feeds, etc. The best way to ensure this is to find an app that will allow you to block tracking and screenshots in specific apps or websites.
This is also a useful feature if you’re dealing with a lot of client data, such as in the healthcare industry, which is heavily regulated when it comes to privacy and data protection. In case you cannot choose what to see or track, it is better to have one trusted person check all the activity, and never share the screenshots with people who might use them to their advantage. Keep this information safe, and if possible, be the only one who has access to the data.
Limit Data Access
There’s no need for your marketing manager to view what people in the accounting department are doing. Give each team leader or manager access to the data related to their team, or projects, while giving each employee access to their own data.
There are software options that will allow you to give clients access to their project’s data. Double-check everything to make sure you’re not sharing the data of a different customer with them. If you are unsure how to do this, you can always check different types of software that offer these features, and find the one that works best for you. If needed, take a class that will improve your skills, and always check what you are sharing and with whom. Note that the trackers will still contain sensitive data, and you need to be extremely careful.
Always Tell Your Employees About Monitoring
Whether it’s required by law in your location or not. Employees will definitely appreciate you giving them the heads up.
You might think that you’ll be able to use the software in secret, but no secret stays a secret forever. Once your employees find out what you were doing, you could be opened to lawsuits, your company’s brand will be destroyed, and you’ll lose your most valuable asset – your employees.
In addition to this, when you tell your employees about the software, they will start paying more attention to the tasks at hand, and they will make sure that the job is done. There is no point in keeping this a secret because we all know that everyone takes breaks, and everyone checks their social media feed. No one expects our team to be focused only on their jobs for 8 or more hours a day, and when you tell them about the monitoring, they will know how to protect their personal data and steer away from social media profiles.
Wrap Up
Making sure that your employees’ privacy is protected, even if you’re using an employee monitoring software, isn’t really that hard. You just need to make sure that you’re collecting the data you actually need, control who has access to it and be open and transparent about your activities no matter what.
When you start using this type of software, you will be able to pay more attention to the things that your team is doing, you will be able to monitor the progress of every project, and you won’t have to wait for your team to give you updates on the tasks that they are doing. Many companies are already incorporating this process, and the statistics have shown that productivity will increase, and the tasks will get done faster when your crew knows that they are being watched. Note that this is not something you should use to apply pressure on your employees, and they should be aware of it. This type of software is used to help businesses improve, and to find the roots of the issues that might be occurring in your company. Use it correctly, and you will largely benefit from it.
