10.04.2023
Employee Monitoring Industry Overview
In its most broad terms, employee monitoring includes watching the activity of an employee during the working hours. Nowadays, the industry has grown tremendously, and it now includes digital software for such monitoring. We’ve previously compiled a list of most used monitoring solutions for 2023. Employee Monitoring Software enables the overview of employees’ online activities.
The rise of the Employee Monitoring Software industry is typically driven by three main trends:
1.Proving Compliance to Meet Regulations
Organizations who must comply with regulations, such as SOX, HIPAA, FISMA, or report activities for audit purposes turn to Employee Monitoring Software during compliance audit. Such software can allow administrators to intervene and stop a data breach in progress. Keystroke monitoring can also be a crucial step towards meeting compliance standards and regulations.
2.Ensuring Productivity of Remote Employees
The rise of the remote work has increased the need for companies to monitor employees working from home. Organizations are turning to Employee Monitoring Software to get indicators on employee engagement, duration of their breaks, applications they use, and time they spend working on current tasks. When using Employee Monitoring Software to assess productivity, the ability to customize activities by user group is incredibly important. For example, an app that’s classified as productive for one employee may be considered unproductive for another one.
3.Protecting Against Insider Threats
Insiders like unscrupulous employees, vendors or partners can pose a threat to sensitive company data, its intellectual property, and corporate infrastructure. Conventional security techniques typically fail at identifying insider threats within the network. Therefore organizations are turning to Employee Monitoring Software to protect against insider threat through visibility into online activity across IT infrastructure. By creating a baseline and understanding common activity patterns around emails, messages, file transfers and USB use, employee monitoring solutions pinpoint anomalies within computer usage patterns and identify insider leaks and data compromises.
Employee Monitoring Software Benefits
Both employers and employees can all stand to gain something from the use of Employee Monitoring Software.
Here are the most common benefits of such solutions:
Improved efficiency and productivity
The typical full-time employee is paid for 8 hours of work each day. But on average, several hours are being wasted each week due to inefficient use of time, which ultimately costs businesses their money. Without accurate time tracking, it can be rather difficult to pinpoint the source of such inefficiencies.
Most employee monitoring solutions have a time tracking feature that can show managers exactly how much time employees spend in certain apps over a set period of time as well as the activity levels (such as mouse and keyboard usage) for each person.
We also recommend transparent monitoring, since nowadays more than ever employees are worried about their employers utilizing monitoring software on the work PCs.
Useful employee insights
At some point, most specialists tend to experience the decrease in their work engagement or the overall feeling of dissatisfaction with their job. For many employers, that’s a sign to dig deeper and get to the heart of such problems.
Automated data collection by employee monitoring solutions allows managers to better understand areas where business processes can be improved, such as adding new machinery, updating software on a regular basis or even hiring new employees.
Moreover, it’s important to highlight that monitoring software doesn’t simply identify the lowest performers, but also showcases the high-achievers, making it easier for managers to assess work tendencies of such employees and reward them. It also makes it easier to agree on achievable goals for each employee based on their performance, which in turn will boost their engagement and loyalty to the company.
Data security
Employee Monitoring Software enhances company IT security by allowing managers to track emails and instant messages of their team members. If employers notice certain discrepancies or careless behavior of their employees, they can then arrange for better training of the specialists or strengthen overall security protocols.
Better transparency and resource allocation
Employee monitoring can have a tremendous impact on the managers’ ability to synchronize their teams. Having access to statistics on each one of the employees can provide executives with highly detailed insights into what’s happening in the company at any moment. And even if your unscrupulous employees try to go around the monitoring, do not worry, we’ve gone ahead and covered the most common ways employees try to cheat the monitoring software so that you are aware of such methods.
There’s another noticeable benefit for employees. Having such solution means they don’t sit around waiting for work. Instead, projects are assigned in advance, with manageable deadlines and fewer interruptions or check-ins. Successful delegation fosters collaboration, helps employees strengthen their skills, makes them more productive, increases trust inside the teams, and lets everyone focus on the bigger picture. It also makes employees feel valued, which in turn increases the levels of employee happiness and satisfaction.
Types of Companies That Monitor Their Employees
Having assessed the needs of various companies that turn to Employee Monitoring Software, we’ve compiled a list of industries that most commonly use it.
IT industry
The most obvious sector that benefits from Employee Monitoring Software is the IT industry, where the companies use these solutions to get full transparency on their employees’ efforts. Employees also want their real productivity to be recognized, proper reports to show their efficiency, the completion of tasks, time spent on projects, etc.
It is important to note that some companies that develop powerful Employee Monitoring Software deliberately do not disclose their client lists, as they believe that such publicity could have a potentially negative impact on the human resources side of these brands (a notable example here would be Kikidler).
Finance & accounting
Customer, financial, and investor data make up a majority of financial services and banking operations, therefore making the protection of such data from improper use the ultimate priority. Monitoring solutions protect companies’ sensitive data against both internal and external threats with behavioral monitoring and analytics.
For example, an independent New-York based insurance broking employee-owned organization, York International Agency LLC also uses Employee Monitoring Software to improve their employee productivity (as gathered from the ActivTrak customer story).
Staffing & recruiting industry
Implementing an employee monitoring solution helps managers to monitor staff computer usage & track the accurate time for better projects, budget, and team management. Employee Monitoring Software is a great tool that helps in hiring the right people for specific tasks.
Turns out even workflow automation platforms, such as Autymate and Asembia, need the help of employee monitoring tools (as gathered from the list of ActivTrak users).
Real estate
Employee Monitoring Software additionally helps to review accurate reports regarding the amount of time certain team members spend on particular projects. Billable and non-billable hours can be easily identified thanks to time tracking features of the software, and more accurate project budget costs can therefore be estimated.
Examples of real estate agencies employing the help of monitoring software include Century 21 and Opulent Agency (as gathered from the list of Hubstaff users).
Retail industry
In such a high-pressure environment as retail, managers need to handle the workforce as efficiently as possible for maximum productivity, better customer service, and better business results. A powerful way to manage employees, improve their efficiency, and streamline their operations is through employee monitoring and time tracking tools, which help track the kind of activities that staff members engage in during their working hours.
One instance of big online retailers who turn to the help of Employee Monitoring Software is Thrive Market (as gathered from the list of Time Doctor users).
Manufacturing
Employees in the manufacturing sector perform a wide range of tasks, varying from assembly lines and quality control to production and logistics. Employee Monitoring Software becomes a handy tool in ensuring that every team member follows standard protocols, whether it is carried out in order to protect intellectual property or meet compliance standards.
An example of a manufacturer who uses Employee Monitoring Software is Fam Brands LLC (as gathered from the ActivTrak customer story).
Education
Monitoring solutions allow for an in-depth look into which sites students are accessing, what searches are performed and what apps are used along with the ability to filter and block inappropriate content with just a few clicks. They also enable educational institutions to comply with FERPA and CIPA regulations.
Healthcare
Employee Monitoring Software also helps organizations conform with ongoing privacy and security requirements of HIPAA regulated PII, PHI and EHR data with its extensive user activity monitoring, data exfiltration protection, audit, reporting and forensics capabilities.
A wide variety of companies use different employee monitoring solutions for monitoring their employees. The list of such businesses includes Cogent Infotech, The Knowledge Academy, ACL Digital (https://we360.ai/it); Disney, Universal, Toyota, Amica (https://www.worktime.com/); Orange Theory, NOBU, Allstate, Asembia, Autymate (https://www.activtrak.com/customers/); SIXT, Mapon, Printful (https://desktime.com/); Flatworld Solutions, Hare, Farmers Insurance, Cadena (https://www.insightful.io/platform); Carrier, Legal Nodes, Mack Defense, Fima (https://www.monitask.com/en/).
Many companies also turn to time tracking solutions. These businesses include Amazon, Uber, GE, Ogilvy, Booking.com (https://toggl.com/track/); Kellogg's, Workday, Marriott, PepsiCo (https://timelyapp.com/); KPMG, Mayo Clinic, AutoCAD (https://myhours.com/).
At the same time it is important to note that some companies that develop powerful Employee Monitoring Software deliberately do not disclose their client lists, as they believe that such publicity could have a potentially negative impact on the human resources side of these brands (a notable example here would be Kikidler).