With the increase in people working from home, employers have been looking for ways to monitor the productivity of their employees. Software solutions such as Teramind, Hivedesk, Time Doctor, and Sneek are enabling firms to do so, by giving them the option to track their employee’s activity. But how do they actually track this? And what does this mean for the future of work practices?
Tracking software in action
The software solutions work in different ways, but they generally involve tracking how an employee is using their mouse and keyboard, while also taking periodic screenshots of either the person or their screen. For example, the program Sneek takes photos of employees every 1-5 minutes, depending on the employer’s preferences, and displays them on a digital photo wall for everyone to see.
This solution has received mixed responses from the public. Not surprisingly, a lot of employees see it as an invasion of their privacy, finding the program to be intimidating and unnecessary, rather than motivating. Privacy appears to be an issue among many of these programs, as some of them essentially allow employers to “spy” on employees.
Measuring productivity
As the popularity of these systems continues to increase, it is worth critically examining how effective they actually are in improving productivity. For example, a study by Gartner from 2021 found that people were more likely to pretend they were working when being monitored by tracking software while working from home. This begs the question, do such programs actually increase productivity, or do they only increase the appearance of productivity?
Potential alternatives
As a result of the controversy around this topic, a lot of companies are looking for alternatives to make sure employees stay productive while working from home. Global Workplace Analytics suggests that the best option for ensuring productivity is still to set clear goals and manage results. Maybe this is what companies should be focusing on instead of trying to track their employees?
I think this topic prompts a lot of interesting questions. If you have any experience with these types of software, feel free to share it in the comments!
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/05/covid-coronavirus-work-home-office-surveillance
Hi Anette,
Really interesting article! There is indeed a huge information asymmetry between workers from home and employers. The softwares that you mentioned might help the employer with a solution to their problem, but in my opinion it won’t be helping the employee significantly As mentioned, the employee understandably will have privacy concerns. Additionally, I think it will also create a toxic work environment. The employee probably won’t feel any trust if he/she is constantly monitored. For such a software to be implemented on a wide scale, I think the employees should be properly incentivised because otherwise they will not agree with using it. In general, if an employer wants to constantly monitor their employees then I think there is already something wrong with the relationship between them. The employer should trust the employee to get his/her work done. I would say, the best solution for both parties is by doing a daily standup in which you explain what you did the day before and what you will today. Another tip for the employer would be to find a way to make the employees’ tasks measurable in order to track progress.
Hi Anette,
Thank you for sharing this interesting blog! It is certainly relevant in our ‘new normal’.
I do think you make a valid point in the potential alternatives. My first question was ‘Is this really about productivity or more about attendance?’. I can luckily say I don’t have any experiences with such software, at least not that I know of. What I do find interesting is that, in my own experience, I am way more productive at home than at the office. This because you probably won’t have that many colleagues around who want to talk for ‘five quick minutes’ – and those conversations are certainly not always productive.
So, for me, it would almost seem illogical to measure productivity at home, if you don’t measure it in the office to begin with. As if being ‘seen’ is the same as actually working in the most productive way. This is probably highly related to the kind of job you have but I do think that, if the job allows it, the focus should be on delivering good work and meeting deadlines. It was definitely interesting to think about!