Media Release

Feb 22: The pandemic may have begun in 2020, but the world has irrevocably shifted. As working from home went from being mandatory to a viable option, employees and companies have also adapted to the new normal and productivity tools such as employee monitoring software started popping up left and right in order to set clear and fair expectations for both employees and staff.

In the early days when remote work was still new, many traditional employees found it a struggle to log off and found themselves consumed with work. With the lines between working hours and private life began to blur, there was an increased number of employees suffering from burnout and stress. On the flip side, there were also employees who noticed that they were clocking in later than usual and took more breaks while working from home. Without proper regulation, it seemed that the remote working environment was derailing proper work ethics, which led to the implementation of management platforms which allowed employees to be held accountable for their own work performance and ensuring that they don’t overwork themselves.

While the software for employee monitoring is nothing new, there has been a surge in demand for it due to the rise of remote workers. However, there is also the issue of privacy. According to the founder of one such tracking software, “It isn’t an invasion of privacy because workers know that they are being watched.”

That may sound like a solid reasoning, but it is far from being foolproof because workers don’t know exactly how much is being watched. Employees that have certain software installed on their phones and work computers should be informed explicitly about what is being monitored. For instance, a New York Times writer decided to test out the software for herself, just to see how much employers can see and the results are staggering.

“Every few minutes, it snapped a screenshot of the websites I browsed, the documents I was writing and the social media sites I visited. From my phone, it mapped where I went, including a two-hour bike ride that I took around Battersea Park with my kids in the middle of one workday,” reported the writer in her article.

However, employers reported a drop in productivity when the use of tracking systems were not implemented. Employees were not as responsive to work emails or following up with customers, leading to a drop in sales and productivity. Once an employee monitoring software was implemented, there were immediate results that showed an increase in productivity.

Taking into consideration the sudden move to working from home and the speed at which companies had to optimize their workflow to one that catered to a home-based workforce, it’s no surprise that there were some hiccups along the way. But as monitoring software became more sophisticated and KPIs are polished for the new work culture, there seems to be a better understanding of how one should conduct oneself when working remotely, and employees, too, are able to ease off, knowing that they cannot expect employees to work the same way they did while they were at the office, but as long as their KPIs are satisfactorily maintained, there shouldn’t be a problem.