The use of employee tracking technology and digital monitoring in the modern workplace is becoming ever-increasingly prevalent, particularly in hybrid or remote working scenarios, with the primary goals of enhancing productivity, managing work volume, and securing sensitive data.
However, the manner in which most companies execute this type of monitoring is frequently done poorly. If workplace monitoring feels overly invasive, heavy-handed, or overly visible, it will not enhance employee performance but will instead create a significant loss of trust and create a negative impact on employee morale, as well as create resentment and reduced employee productivity.
If you're interested in maintaining employee accountability without sacrificing employee autonomy, it is essential to be aware of common indicators that show you have gone too far by making it too obvious when you are monitoring employees.
Here are six telling signs that employees can tell they are being monitored.
1. A Serious performance decline caused by technology lag
The most common, immediate sign of ("office") surveillance by employers is increased slowdown on company-issued devices where employees run certain types of application(s).
- What this study means: The use of ("office") surveillance tools can cause significant performance degradation due to the large quantities of ("office") resources (CPU and memory) consumed by the software that captures screen images, tracks keystrokes, and logs network activity.
- What a company employee will see/feel: Employees using a laptop will experience dramatic decreases in speed, consistently hear the fan running at full speed, and find that the application freezes when opening documents for work. Employees will easily identify the new employee monitoring software running in the system/application software background.
2. Infrequent/Inconsistent/Unnecessary document captures unquestionably indicate employee tracking
Many companies implement tracking software to monitor employee screen activity. However, aggressive/non-timely tracking of employees creates serious issues for employees regarding their privacy.
- What this policy means: The capture timing frequency of the screen images is excessive; there are many instances where it captures images of low-focus/low-intensity work activity (for example, while an employee is reading a long document or completing a simple document). To make matters worse, it may even capture the employee's screen images during their personal time.
- What a company employee will see/feel: Employees will notice an active "capture-in-progress" icon, a brief pop-up notification indicating that the screen is being captured, and an in-app "pause tracking" button that they must continually push to stop the software from capturing their screen images. Tracking and interfering with an employee's ability to effectively do his/her job creates the appearance of being watched.
3. The Emergence of a new icon associated with monitoring
Many monitoring solutions operate quietly without informing employees of their presence, while other types of monitoring solutions install an icon that can be viewed through the system tray or task manager on a personal computer.
- What happens: When an employee performs a software update on a device, a generic icon is added without the employee's knowledge. For example, "S" is used to represent surveillance or a clock symbol that was not mentioned in the standard auditing process.
- The consequence: Employees may refer to the "strange new icon" or the process they can't terminate in task manager as "weird." The lack of communication regarding the monitoring solution's presence erodes trust between employees and the organization.
4. Lack of control over network
When tracking software is first deployed, IT policies become much stricter to prevent employees from identifying or disabling tracking software, limiting employees' ability to do their jobs.
- What happens: The organization will limit employee access by restricting permissions to install necessary developer tools, disabling specific ports, or reviewing information on the device's system files.
- The consequence: Employees cannot install innocent browser extensions or change minor settings such as the date/time format. This indicates to employees that IT has implemented measures to conceal the tracking software and manipulate employee workspace environments.
5. Management is policing micro-activity instead of results.
It is evident when a company has become too aggressive with their employee tracking tools because they begin to utilize low-value data to initiate punitive dialogue with employees.
- The Issue: Rather than discuss project milestones or quarterly goals with an employee, a manager will question the employee about why their "active time" dropped from 10:15 a.m. to 10:25 a.m. last Tuesday.
- The Indicator: When a manager focuses exclusively on the inputs (keystrokes, mouse clicks) rather than the outputs (finished work, quality of work), an employee feels as though they are being treated as an untrustworthy cog in a machine rather than a professional.
6. For lack of transparency in monitoring or monitoring policies.
If your company does not have a documented monitoring policy, or if the policy that is documented is vague, employees' perception will be that there is complete and total spying going on. This is the most blatant indicator that monitoring is unethical.
- The Issue: Monitoring tools are provided by the company, but it is not clear what is being tracked, why it is being tracked, and how the information will be utilized (and deleted).
- The Indicator: Employees work in the dark when it comes to monitoring transparency. Transitional monitoring is not only an ethical responsibility, but it is also a necessary component of developing trust. When employees are aware of the system that monitors them, they are less likely to assume some sort of malicious intent behind it.
Modern monitoring must be developed for the purpose of providing actionable information to assist and empower employees. If the tools you use for tracking employee performance are causing damage to employee morale and to the trust between employees and their employer, you're using these tools incorrectly. The only sustainable solution is to move away from invasive employee monitoring practices that harm morale and toward ethical monitoring that focuses on employee output rather than minute-by-minute activities.
