Employee Monitoring Policies Beginner Guide: Learn the Fundamentals

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Employee monitoring is a tricky topic. From questions of integrity and legality in order to whether or not employee checking is beneficial, there’s a great deal to unpack. Should you be considering implementing equipment to track your employees’ productivity and protection at work, you’ve visit the right place. This guide will show you why you need an employee monitoring policy—and what to keep in mind while you create one.

What is Employee Checking?

Employee monitoring can look totally different from one company to a different, and employers keep track of their employees to get a variety of reasons. But there are three essential goals that employers tend to look at when deciding whether in order to implement a supervising plan. When completed right, employee overseeing helps companies:

  • Prevent unsafe or illegal circumstances
  • Increase efficiency
  • Boost worker wellbeing

That said, there are downsides to employee monitoring. Worker surveillance and supervising can cause employees in order to feel that their companies don’t trust all of them, create extra costs for employers, and set a company at lawful risk.  

The most important action to take if you are planning to use workplace checking is to create an employee monitoring policy. This document should reveal an employer’s intentions of monitor employees, lay out when and where employees can expect privacy and exactly where they cannot, and define how the company is adhering to all local, state, and government labor laws.

Screenshot of Business in a Box's privacy in the workplace policy template.
A good example of an employee monitoring plan template from Business in a Box.

Before you can develop an employee monitoring policy, it’s important to understand what employee surveillance appears to be.

Types of Worker Monitoring

Back again before the digital trend, employee monitoring had been simple. Employers viewed their employees in the workplace to assess performance, listened to customer problems and praises, and kept track of labor using time credit cards.  

A lot has changed.  

Thanks to the evolution associated with electronics, monitoring employees is easier than ever before. Some would say it’s too easy and that will excessive monitoring might have serious drawbacks just for employers and employees alike.  

Let’s take a look at the most common forms of employee overseeing, along with their benefits and pitfalls.  

Video Surveillance

It’s difficult to find a shop, restaurant, or even a home without at least some security cameras installed. Whilst cameras are less common in workplace spaces, they can assist in preventing crimes like theft and sexual assault—and provide evidence to assist prosecute such crimes when they do occur.

But you can find important rules employers must follow when using camcorders to record worker activity.  

First, you must have the best reason why monitoring employees using a video camera matters to your business. Protection, investigative processes, plus time and movement studies are all legitimate business reasons.

If you’re considering making use of video cameras to monitor your own employees for any work-related reason, there are several tips to consider.  

First, recording sound without employee consent may violate federal government wiretapping laws. It is okay to require that consent as a condition of acknowledging a job, but you nevertheless need to obtain this first.  

Second, cameras should be easily visible to employees. If they are hidden in any way, you must have a really good reason for this—and be ready to back it up in courtroom. And you should never report audio or video clip in a space exactly where an employee has a reasonable expectation of privacy, such as a bathroom, altering room, or locker room.  

Third, each condition has different laws and regulations regarding video recording in the workplace. Make sure you understand and follow your own state’s laws.

Monitoring Software meant for Computers

Whether or not it’s food support drivers who use GPS to navigate to customers’ houses or office workers producing reports on company-issued laptops, computers fortify today’s workforce. They could easily be surveilled using monitoring software program.

Monitoring software provides employers with a way to make sure their own employees are staying on the job during their compensated work hours. A geofence can keep motorists from making unwanted pitstops, for example. Social media blockers can help workers avoid the temptation of Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, and other time sucks.

The best employee monitoring software stimulates employees to work a lot more productively without alienating them.  

Time Doctor any of our favorite checking software services with this very reason. This product operates on the assumption that employees are very well aware of the many interruptions their laptops offer—and that many employees would like help staying concentrated.

Screenshot of Time Doctor's time management system.
Time Doctor assists employees and employers track time administration.

Regardless of whether an employee is working from home or from inside the workplace, monitoring software like Time Doctor assists them stay on task. For example , if an employee can’t resist the temptation to check Fb when they’re said to be working, Time Doctor will send an alert to assist them get back to function.

Time Doctor and other monitoring software services tend to track things like team talks, time, web plus app use, arrives, work email, and attendance. They can furthermore enable employers or employees to take screenshots and screen songs.  

Features like this can get challenging, as some studies show that remote employees resent these monitoring methods—and that they may even decline job offers from companies that use all of them.

Trust is vital here. If you decide to make use of screen recordings or screenshots, express your own reasons to employees and take the time to listen to any kind of questions they have. Most importantly, make sure you’re pursuing the privacy laws that will apply to your company.

Sometimes, it’s inside your company’s best attention to deploy silent software monitoring measures. Unfortunately, data theft is a real concern. In case you regularly handle sensitive data, you do not want that data getting stolen—whether by someone inside your organization or someone on the exterior.  

Checking software like InterGuard helps secure your computer data against internal cyber attacks and data theft while remaining compliant with data laws.

Screenshot of InterGuard's safety and secure features described.
When you need an extra layer or 2 of security, checking software like InterGuard can help.

Telephone Monitoring 

When employees operate a call middle or regularly interact with clients using employer phones, telephone supervising can help ensure the quality of a call. Some forms of call checking include recording phone calls, listening in upon live calls, plus jumping in to help agents when a call is headed southern.  

Talkdesk is one of our preferred call monitoring services because it provides call barging and live monitoring, but it also enables supervisors to give opinions on specific points in the call.

Screenshot from Talkdesk's website showing an example employee's dashboard with their activity data on screen with add comment feature also shown.
Talkdesk helps employers keep track of employee phone calls with all the goal of enhancing employee performance and customer experience.

As with almost every other type of employee supervising, call surveillance is better done under the path of a clear and comprehensive employee checking policy.

Biometric Monitoring 

Biometric technology is booming in both personal and workplace-related use. All of us use facial recognition to unlock the iPhones and push our fingerprints straight into time clocks to work hours. These types of biometric advances certainly make life a lot more streamlined, but they might have downsides.  

Employers appreciate that fingerprinted clock-ins lessen time theft, for instance , but employee recommends worry about what otherwise the personal data—a person’s fingerprint—might be used just for.  

Recently, some employers have encouraged the use of biometric screenings and physical fitness watch-based health endeavours to improve employee health and fitness. But this information, critics argue, may also pave the way to get discrimination if companies use the data to inform health insurance coverage choices.

If you decide to utilize a biometric tool associated with any kind—like UKG’s TouchFree ID pertaining to punching in or company Fitbits to encourage healthy practices—make sure you:

  • Present this information for your employees in created form
  • Reveal what the data is going to be used for
  • Obtain employee consent on paper
Screenshot from UKG's website showing face recognition with clock-in system. Feature descriptions on page as well.
UKG’s encounter recognition clock-in system adds a layer of security plus convenience to the punch-in process.

While few claims currently have laws addressing biometric monitoring, regulations are gaining terrain. Illinois, Texas, and Washington all have got laws regulating the usage of biometric information. Additional states are poised to follow suit.

Stay out of any legal issues by following the particular steps above—and maintaining the data private once you have it.

Steps to Creating an Employee Monitoring Policy

The first step toward creating a worker monitoring policy is to enlist the help of your own company’s lawyer or an online legal provider like LegalZoom. Tell your attorney how and why you plan to monitor your employees.

An attorney will be able to assist you to understand the laws you need to follow before you can even decide what checking methods to use. They could also help you draft an employee monitoring policy or point a person in the direction of a suitable template.  

Screenshot of Legal Zoom's lawyer web page.
LegalZoom is really a wallet-friendly way to obtain live assistance from an attorney when you need it.

You can find employee checking policy templates on sites like Template. internet. What we love concerning this template is that it describes the reasons for monitoring in detail.

Screenshot of a privacy and employee monitoring policy from template.net.
A detailed employee monitoring policy may help build trust in your way on the path to your employees.

In general, an employee monitoring policy ought to include the following sections:  

  • Introduction: explains why you intend to use monitoring equipment, which software providers you’ll be using, and exactly what benefits these monitoring practices will bring to both the employer as well as the employee
  • Scope: outlines who the particular monitoring policy can be applied to—for example, in-house employees but not independent contractors
  • Outline of Supervising Systems: a brief overview of the types of monitoring you’ll be using, when you is going to be using it, and whether or not it will be used for remote control work
  • Data Collection: explain why you will collect information, what type of data you are going to collect, how long the data will be stored, and what the company will do with the data
  • Legality: explain how you are adhering to all the laws that apply to your business
  • Personal and Date: a signature represents that an worker is in agreement with all the employee monitoring policy as stated in the document

If the policy ever modifications at any point in time, alert your employees, generate an updated policy, and give employees the updated paperwork to read and sign if they agree.

Please remember to show your lawyer the employee monitoring policy to ensure you comply with all the laws highly relevant to your company.  

Is an Employee Overseeing Policy Right For You?

Yes. If you plan to monitor employees in any way, after that we absolutely suggest implementing an employee monitoring policy.  

A policy like this helps your company enjoy the advantages of monitoring while decreasing the risk of legal or ethical violations that may land you in boiling water.  

But there are additional advantages to employee supervising policies to think of, too:  

  • They help fixed employee expectations designed for work quality in a way that is open and honest, empowering workers to meet and go beyond company standards.
  • They set privacy expectations for employees, so they won’t presume they have privacy on company computers, for example—even if they decide on the devices for personal reasons.
  • Acquiring informed consent for your monitoring practices helps in avoiding ill feelings toward your company—no one likes to be spied on, and oblivious monitoring can land you on the wrong part of the law.
  • They ensure that you are adhering to the relevant data and privacy laws.
  • They help create an ethical, transparent company culture.

It’s true that you will need to put in a little bit of work to create an employee monitoring policy. Yet it’s worth doing the work now to avoid problems down the road.

Final Thoughts About Employee Overseeing Policies

Checking your employees, whether they’re working distantly or in the office, may bolster productivity, assist ensure safety, plus promote well-being. But employers must take good care not to abuse the monitoring of workers, both for ethical and legal reasons. And if you’re going to monitor your employees, we recommend doing so in a way that fosters trust—not ruins it.

An excellent way to avoid issues related to employee security is to implement an employee monitoring policy. These kinds of policies keep your corporation ethical and clear. They help your own employees provide advised consent, leading to a healthier—and more effective! —workplace environment.  

There’s simply no better time compared to now to make worker monitoring policies a part of your employee management system and onboarding process.

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