Benefits of using an employee monitoring software are numerous for employers and employees alike. However, ethical and legal concerns regarding employees’ privacy seem to be a burning topic, so we wondered – is it even possible to track employees’ activities without endangering their privacy?
The answer to this question is yes, but whether employers are harming workers’ privacy depends on what software do companies use to monitor employees and how are they using it, so let’s explore that a bit further.
Does Workplace Privacy Even Exist?
In general, every person has the right to privacy. But it’s not that simple in the corporate environment.
From a standpoint of the person who thinks workplace privacy shouldn’t be expected, you could argue that employees are on the company’s time while they’re spending time in the office. Therefore, the business owners have a right to know what they’re doing.
On the other hand, all employees have time dedicated to breaks. They usually spend this time browsing social media, chatting with friends, making calls, etc. Noone should expect that their employer is tracking such activities.
As you can see, we all have business time and private time when we’re working, but business owners must find a way to enforce monitoring without turning it into Orwell’s novel.
What Should You Monitor?
Website and app usage, time spent on projects and tasks, confidential documents access, screenshots, keystrokes, etc. There are many areas of your employees’ work you could track even with a free tracking software for PC, but that doesn’t mean you should track them.
You should definitely track website and app usage, as well as time, so you can see if your workers are being productive or not. Monitoring access to confidential files could save you millions in data breach costs, so this point is also quite valid.
Screenshots are a great way to provide proof of work to your clients, but what happens if a screenshot is taken while employee is scrolling through Facebook or reading private emails? This is confidential data that shouldn’t be saved in any way. The best would be that you find a software which can blur the screenshots if there are private information on them, or don’t use this feature at all.
As this is one of the more advanced features, you certainly won’t get it if you opt in for the best free PC monitoring software since free options usually give you only the basics.
How Can You Protect the Collected Data?
If you have your heart set on employee monitoring software, you should know the best practices for safely storing the data such software collects.
First of all, in many cases you can give different access levels to employees. There’s admin access, which is usually reserved for the business owner, then there are managerial-level access roles which you can assign to your team leaders and managers. And on the bottom of this list there are employees.
This role-based access is important because your employees will only be able to see their own data, team leaders will see the data of their teams, and admins are able to see everything. It’s completely unnecessary for your Account manager to see the data from your development team, right?
You should also think about where you’ll store the data. If you go for employee monitoring software free download you can expect that storage will be on the maker’s cloud, and that it will be quite limited. Ensure that the maker doesn’t have access to the data you’re collecting, or write up an agreement which will limit their access/use of data collected.
However, if you get a paid version of the software, you might be able to store the data on your own servers. This way, you’re the only one who can access it, so you can be certain it’s very secure.
Wrap Up
Employee monitoring can exist without endangering anyone’s privacy, but it depends on the employer and the way you’re using the software. You can be a Big Brother if you want to, but how far would that get you?
