Tracking Employee Productivity

Introduction:

Do you think that having a separate cabin or working from home can boost employee productivity? Do you prefer working from home over working in an office? Let us see how your employees can be affected by tracking employee productivity to foster efficiency and fruitfulness. 

In the era of remote working, tracking employee productivity is prevalent in many organizations via modern and upcoming technologies. With the ability to monitor almost everything, like screen time, software used, emails received, and even current tabs, employee productivity can be effectively tracked and overall employee performance can be determined. However, while productivity tracking may offer benefits in terms of accountability and optimization, it also raises concerns regarding its impact on employee well-being, privacy, and satisfaction.

This blog will explore the effects of productivity tracking on employees and the importance of striking a balance between productivity and employee welfare. 

Impact of Employee Productivity Tracking:

Companies and organizations constantly monitor employee performance to foster a healthy and productive working environment. Employee productivity statistics can be drawn from monitoring their performance, and employees can be rewarded or laid- off accordingly. Let us see how tracking employee productivity can benefit a company as a whole or prove to be unsatisfactory or inadequate. 

•  Enhanced accountability and performance:

  It is expected from an employee to give their best performance and up-skill themselves in their field. By monitoring employee productivity, the company gains an idea of the time spent on the job and the resources used to complete the task. This increases credibility and helps companies determine employee potential. Moreover, transparency in productivity tracking can foster a sense of responsibility among employees, encouraging them to meet deadlines and deliver quality work.

• Information leakage:

  Along with employee productivity, it is important to monitor information confidentiality. Monitoring the information, resources, or results and maintaining their secrecy should be promoted to avoid any leakage of information to competitors. This allows the organization to ensure its security and protect its competitive advantages. For instance, companies associated with the food industry often have trade secrets or confidential ingredients that need to be protected from the vastly competitive food industry to corner the market. 

• Stress and burnouts:

  It is important to ensure that the employee’s productivity is not just judged by the hours they spend on the given task. The constant monitoring and scrutiny of their activities can create a high-pressure work environment where individuals feel the need to constantly prove their productivity. This creates an unhealthy work environment and can lead to a diminished sense of well-being. Constant monitoring of employees might result in decreased mental health, morale, and job satisfaction, further resulting in poor performance. 

• Privacy concerns:

  Another significant aspect to consider when implementing employee productivity tracking is the invasion of privacy. Employees using their devices for task completion are to be excluded from full tracking. This may raise alarms about information security and its potential misuse. Employees may feel uncomfortable knowing that their every move is being tracked, leading to a sense of surveillance and erosion of trust within the organization. The balance between tracking employee productivity and invasion of privacy is crucial for every organization. 

• Creativity and autonomy:

  Constant monitoring and rigid performance metrics may stifle innovation and limit the freedom to explore new ideas. Creativity needs space, and an organization needs to respect it to foster an efficient work environment. Employees who are constantly monitored might feel constrained by employee productivity tracking, resulting in reduced risk-taking behavior. This hinders creativity, and problem-solving capacity as it doesn’t allow the employee to think outside the box. Striking a balance between productivity tracking and providing employees with the flexibility to express their creativity is essential for fostering a dynamic and innovative work culture.

Also Read: 15 Fun Employee Engagement Activities for Productive Workplace

Ensuring Ethical Employee Productivity Tracking:

Although there are some negative impacts of employee productivity tracing, doing it in transparent and ethical ways might increase the positive effects. It is important to follow certain protocols and procedures before actively tracking employee productivity. Here are some tips to ensure the correct usage of tracking software. 

• Transparent communication:

  Employers need to convey the importance of employee tracking to their employees. It is crucial to establish trust and ensure the employees understand the need for performance tracking. They should know the benefits of these tracking like process improvement, identifying challenges, and supporting their professional development. 

• Focusing on work quality:

  Instead of solely measuring time spent or the number of tasks completed, productivity tracking should emphasize the quality of work and outcomes achieved. This allows the employees to work more efficiently and come up with innovative solutions rather than counting the number of tasks completed and several hours spent on them. This approach encourages employees to concentrate on meaningful and efficient contributions rather than just meeting arbitrary metrics.

• Encouraging flexibility:

  Every employee has a unique working process and it is important to respect that to foster a fruitful workspace. Allowing the employees to control their work process enables them to be more creative and fosters an innovative problem-solving environment. Employee flexibility also helps maintain work-life balance, boosting morale and providing job satisfaction. 

• Ethical data usage:

  The organization needs to use the extracted data ethically, only for employee growth and advancement. Organizations should establish clear guidelines for collecting, storing, and using employee data. Data should be anonymized and used solely for improving organizational processes and supporting employee growth, without infringing upon personal privacy rights. 

Also Read: Employee Life Cycle Empowerment: Excelling Through with Powerful Decision Making

Learn with DT Evolve:

If you are trying to improve your productivity as a manager, decision-making has to be efficient and spot on. You can’t afford to lose your time paralyzed in the face of big decisions, nor can you run away from solving day-to-day problems. If you would like to improve these professional aspects of your job, DT Evolve has a course for you. In this course, you will learn how to use critical thinking and creative problem solving to make better decisions. It will also help you to discover new methods of listening, leading, responding, and innovating by moving beyond familiar ways of thinking and viewing the world. Here’s a link to the course, Decision Making and Problem Solving.

Conclusion: 

Employee productivity tracking can benefit the company in several ways but a balance is crucial. Productivity tracking can offer valuable insights and benefits to organizations, enabling them to enhance efficiency, improve decision-making, and promote employee development. It is also crucial to address the potential threats and negative impacts of regular employee productivity tracking. The most inadequate threat of this process is misusing the extracted data. By implementing ethical monitoring practices, promoting transparency, maintaining a focus on outcomes, and fostering a supportive work environment, organizations can strike a balance that optimizes productivity while prioritizing the well-being of their employees.