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Do you want to keep track of your employees’ computer activity? Before you get started, there are a few things you should be aware of. This article will help business owners better understand what they can track and the best practices to follow when using remote employee monitoring software to track their team’s work activity.

What is Employee Computer Activity Tracking?

Employee activity tracking, in which businesses utilize remote employee monitoring software to track work, employee performance, and work in progress, is becoming more common. To measure performance, track attendance and working hours, maintain transparency, and collect comprehensive work data. Let’s have a look at the most prevalent methods.

Employee computer activity tracking is an automated process of monitoring computer activities, including time tracking, website and application usage, location tracking, screenshot capturing, and much more. This technology offers an unparalleled scope of possibilities for monitoring computer activities when compared to other options, and the following are must-have features:

Remote work is no longer the future of work; instead, it is both present and future. Remote employees are more productive and engaged; it allows them to have a better work-life balance and save on travel time and costs.

However, while working from a home office may appear to be a liberating and enjoyable experience, the reality is that remote employees face significant obstacles, and those obstacles are different for every remote worker. They range from distracting domestic factors that are hard to avoid to increasingly complex domestic duties. This can make it challenging to maintain a healthy work-life balance.

By developing a few excellent habits and implementing several essential recommendations, you may overcome any work-from-home performance issues. Here are the top 5 tips to get you started on the right foot when working from home. 

Regardless of how big or small your organization is, understanding the productivity level of your employees is essential because a productive workforce makes the entire work process operate more smoothly.

A team of high-performing, productive employees is the foundation of any successful business. According to the most recent data on productivity, productive employees are more engaged and efficient, with operating profits increasing by 21%. Measuring employee productivity allows businesses to analyze overall productivity and make further improvements. Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of work productivity is that it is influenced by a wide range of factors. The use of work tools, teammates, management, and the overall work environment can all impact workplace productivity.

Implementing employee monitoring software with productivity tracking features can offer an excellent approach to measure the productivity of your office or hybrid teams. Having a proper productivity tracking solution to generate employee productivity reports is the best approach for progressing your business.

Measuring your team’s performance is vital for your company’s success. However, this isn’t just a case of knowing what an employee does on the clock, but also understanding how productively they use their time.  How to track employee performance refers to everything business owners or managers should do to assess an employee’s work, productivity, or performance. As such, this includes obtaining information about your employees and conducting a thorough analysis of their strengths and weaknesses.

So, where should you begin in this regard? The first stage of employee performance tracking is to collect objective data on how successfully your employees meet the company’s objectives. Indeed, tracking employee performance can help ensure that your company is running smoothly, which may help it meet strategic goals.

To properly measure and enhance employee performance, you must first understand the role your employees play in achieving the organization’s goals. Thereafter, your firm must implement the right tools and techniques to track and assist them with managing their own productivity.

CloudDesk remote employee monitoring software is used by organizations to track time and monitor computer activity of remote employees, freelancers, consultants, independent contractors and even hourly employees.  As a monitoring work from home employees’ software, the information gathered by CloudDesk provides valuable insight into employee performance and productivity. These insights are particularly valuable for business owners, team leaders, supervisors or managers to know how their remote employees are working. The software acts as a replacement for direct in-person monitoring around the office. Through CloudDesk advance intelligent reporting system, managers can see an easy-to-understand visual breakdown of how employees spend their time during working hours.

With CloudDesk businesses can project, ensure overall productivity, measure performance, reduce expenses and closely watch what employees are doing in real-time. Additionally, CloudDesk’s straightforward monitoring process automates various aspects of running a growing business. Managers can instantly check progress of on-going projects and to-dos of their distributed team using CloudDesk’s web or mobile application. Using our online dashboard managers will be able to see how much time their remote employees spend on different task along with productivity metrics like internet activity and website/app usage.

Modern technology has transformed every single aspect of our daily life and work. The concept of working 9-to-5 is rapidly disappearing as more employees are working outside the office. With high-speed internet, the cloud, secure remote connectivity, collaborative software and smartphones, the opportunity to work out of the office is increasing rapidly.

Technology is allowing employees to work from home or their desired location, using their personal devices to do their official tasks. Businesses implement monitoring measurements and other policies for their remote employees while they work from home. But remote work best practices are not only about using technology and software to measure productivity, establish communication or protect valuable data, it is also about the needs of employees and companies.

In this article we will discuss the best practices for organizations to manage a team of successful remote employees while allowing them to balance work and personal life. According to SHRM (Society for Human Resource Management), 59% of U.S. employers are allowing their employees to work from locations outside the office. The trend of remote work is continuing to grow. While the demand is rising, concerns regarding managing remote employees are also raising lots of questions. Some employers still believe that providing flexible working hours are beneficial only for employees. On the other hand, a large number of employers have realized that giving employees the freedom to work flexibly has made employees more productive and has greatly helped businesses to grow. Bill Gates once said that as competition for talents is getting tough, companies should offer extra flexibility to their employees to retain the talent. And, he might be right.

Much has been written about the sudden transition in our working lives due to the on-going pandemic. The Covid-19 pandemic still continues to affect global economic growth and plays a significant role in shaping the workplace. However, it is true that during the past two years employees have learned to adapt to new behavioral patterns and expectations while they work from home. In 2021, remote work has given employees more freedom to choose when and where to work and also given them the opportunity to strike a better balance between personal and working life. While the year 2021 was a year of adaptation and recovery, 2022 will be a year of growth.

So what will the world of remote work look like in 2022? With the number of cases of Covid-19 still increasing in most parts of the world, it is no surprise that remote work is here to stay. Leaders will need to address many positive trends and renewed focus for a more improved hybrid working model. Businesses have already realized the importance of digitization and use of modern tools to get work done. As a result, businesses and remote professionals are ready to enter 2022 on a high note and make progress with these technological capabilities.

Remote working attracts employees with lots of benefits, like reduced costs, greater flexibility, increased productivity and more. Businesses also enjoy reduced cost of office maintenance, access to a greater talent pool  and more. When companies wanted to move back to on-site operation in 2021, not every employee was interested in returning to the previous work mode. This has given rise to a hybrid workplace- where employees are working remotely and also working in the office when required. This is a flexible approach that allows employees to maintain a healthy work-life balance. Several businesses reported an increase in productivity of their hybrid employees. In these cases, it is no wonder that in 2022 employees will still work from home. In this article, we will highlight the top five remote work trends for 2021 that businesses can adapt in 2022 to manage their overall business growth.

For thousands of call center agents around the world, remote work has become an increasingly popular option. Agent productivity in a virtual customer service center measures the utilization of time and resources by an organization for achieving beneficial outcomes. The main goal is effective communication to solve customer issues efficiently and quickly. As use of advanced technology and cloud connectivity open the door to virtual call centers, more businesses are employing remote agents to manage their customer service departments. Technology has surely made it possible for call center agents to work remotely, but without the proper software and protocols, it can negatively impact your business’s profitability and agent productivity.

Why Is it Important to Measure Agent Productivity in Remote Call Centers?

Implementing remote call centers offers endless benefits, but the transition comes with certain challenges. One of the biggest challenges businesses face when moving to remote operation is how they can maintain functional agent management when their customer service team is working from distributed locations. The key component of a successful remote call center is the perfect combination of expert management, highly skilled agents and dependable digital tools. It is essential for you to stay on top of your agents’ performance to provide an excellent customer experience. To ensure that your customer receives the best possible service you have to plan the most effective way to guarantee agent productivity remains at its highest possible levels. Agent productivity in a call center plays a vital role in boosting your business growth. The more productive your agents are, the better they perform in their role, which ultimately leads to higher revenues. To foster productivity, you need a clear understanding of what a customer wants when they contact an agent.  Today’s customers look forward to exceptional customer service and 50% of them will simply cancel your service once they receive a negative experience. Plus, around 60% of dissatisfied customers share their negative experiences on digital platforms which can negatively impact your business’ reputation over time.  It can be challenging to effectively oversee your agents remotely.  But don’t worry. We are here to help. If you have concerns about managing a virtual call center, we want to offer this guide to help you better manage your remote agents.

Companies from all over the world are embracing a work-from-home culture  One of the core keys behind this shift is the benefits and flexibility that employees receive while they are working from home. With more people working remote from home, it raises the concern for the companies of how to track the work activities of its employees. One of the biggest holdbacks for companies to allow remote work is trust. Business owners and managers simply don’t trust their people to work unmonitored. Companies want to make sure that employees working from home are actually being productive on company time and working efficiently.

Technology has made remote work easier, and with widely adopted application employees are able to work together with their remote co-workers and clients. But the internet plays a crucial role in distracting employees during the work hours, which might lead to lower productivity and poor results. Technology, at the same time, has also enabled managers to supervise employees using monitoring tools. When it comes to monitoring work from employees, the answer is obvious. Employee monitoring programs give companies insight into how employees spend their time during assigned work hours. The tool is extremely helpful in maintaining the record of employees’ work activities and helps a company to keep an eye on the behavior trends of employees when at work. The whole monitoring process ensures transparency at every level, helps companies to manage remote workforces, and prevents losses in the long run. The software uses various methods to gather information about the employee’s computer activity and keeps record of these for further analysis. Here is a list of most commonly used features that companies need to monitor its employees efficiently and effectively.

When teams work remotely, they can’t succeed without having accountability. Team accountability is equally important for all employees, regardless of their position and hierarchy within their company. In today’s ever evolving work environment, there is no doubt that many organizations in the world have gone remote. As estimated 4.7 million employees, which is around 3.4% of the workforce, are now working in hybrid work mode, amongst which around 44% of employees are full-time remote workers. So, now when more and more companies are moving to work-from-home policy, leaders and project managers are concentrating on how to improve employee accountability in the remote workplace.

Whether you have an entire team of virtual workers or a partly hybrid team, it can be moderately difficult to effectively participate, connect, and manage due to infrequent face-to-face communication. Remote team leaders face a number of key challenges in establishing accountability and efficiency when there’s a lack of face-to-face interaction. Accountability at work ensures that supervisors, team members, and all other employees working in an organization take the responsibility for the work they do, keep their commitments, complete their tasks before deadline, and work proactively. The scenario is also the same when it comes to remote team accountability, where remote employees take the responsibility of his or her performance, actions, and behaviours. When an employee takes ownership of a task, they can take a more active role in business goals.

When a company nurtures accountability in a remote team, it leads to increased employee efficiency, higher employee esteem, and a better ROI. Businesses with strong team accountability achieve more and align their personal goals with their company’s goals for the best achievable results.

Imagine there are employees working in your organization who are expert in their role but spend their valuable time on insignificant tasks, or even worse spend time doing their personal tasks? Also imagine there is an employee busy doing unnecessary things for which all top priority projects are sidelined? How do you actually know how your employees are working? There are infinite scenarios happening in your office on a daily basis and they swiftly pass you unnoticed.

Due to the significant change in the workplace and advancement of technology various tech industries, including other professional services, are offering jobs that can be done at home. Businesses have been looking for ways to ensure the safety, efficiency, and record keeping of their remote workforce. With built in GPS tracking features in monitoring software, managers are able to know in detail about remote employee work location. However, while monitoring employees and tracking their work location, it is important to be fair to employees, because the line between monitoring apps and spying apps is crossed rather quickly.

Productivity Monitoring Software with GPS Tracking Feature for Remote Workers

With an increasing number of employees working remotely, organizations are slowly but most definitely making employee GPS tracking an integral part of running their business. While employee monitoring software helps you track employee working hours and measures employee productivity, you also need a GPS tracking feature to ensure your remote employees are working from a steady location. Surely you don’t want an employee who travels from one location to another without informing you. You can easily prevent this with a location tracking feature. If you need to know if your remote employee clocked in and out from the right location, GPS tracking is the best way to do that. Before we proceed, let’s learn more.

6 Benefits of Using CloudDesk Geofencing Feature to Manage Remote Teams

1.   CloudDesk Geofencing feature helps you to easily identify employees who clock in or out beyond their authorized location.

2.   You can check the dashboard to track employees’ locations any time on a live map.

3.   No need to travel from job site to job site to check on your teams.

4.   You can prevent employees from overstating expenditures because your remote employees know that their location is being tracked.

5.   You can prevent employees traveling from one location to another without informing you.

6.   Based on their location, you can enforce specific working hours, salary structure, and other employment benefits.

Monitoring a remote workforce is a complex and intricate issue. With the right monitoring approach, businesses can empower remote employees and boost productivity without overstepping into an employee’s privacy. More businesses than ever are shifting to remote work environments, making it compulsory for businesses to monitor work activities and productivity levels of employees. Employee monitoring software plays a vital role in capturing employee work activities but also raises the question of employee privacy issues. That’s where ways of ethical monitoring come into play. It helps you to know about effective monitoring methods, how much to monitor while maintaining transparency, and how to protect employee privacy lawfully.

Ethical monitoring is the right way of measuring employee work activities by balancing the act of privacy, consent, legality, and transparency. When all of this is done properly, businesses can ensure a more supportive and productive work environment.

There are many benefits of ethical monitoring when it is done collaboratively and transparently. We know that an employee monitoring system raises a lot of questions about business culture, ethical issues, workplace privacy, and monitoring laws — this article will teach you how to eliminate issues surrounding employee monitoring ethics using the CloudDesk approach. In this article, we’ll also discuss details about ethical monitoring and highlight its key benefits and consequences, considering the issue from multiple angles and on several levels. You’ll also learn how to ensure your approach to ethical monitoring fosters a productive team of remote employees. By the time you finish reading, you’ll gather complete insights that you need to successfully implement an effective monitoring system in your business that’s a win-win-win for employers, employees, and the enterprise.

What is the Difference Between Employee Monitoring and Ethical Monitoring?

Before we discover how to conduct ethical monitoring, let’s learn a bit about what employee monitoring is and how it works. Employee monitoring is the process of tracking and monitoring employee’s work activities using a monitoring software on an employee’s work computer. There are a variety of monitoring softwares available in the market, ranging from video monitoring to computer activities monitoring to full spy monitoring.

On the other hand, ethical monitoring is a way of monitoring employees using software to track their work progress and measure their productivity without invading an employee’s privacy. With a growing number of remote employees, businesses are constantly looking for an effective solution that can assure them that their remote employees are actually working instead of wasting their time. Which is why more and more businesses are implementing software to track and monitor their remote employees. By implementing employee monitoring ethics and fairness, you can establish a transparent employee monitoring system, where your employees can work without worrying about losing their personal information.

Why is Ethical Monitoring Important for Employees?

Simply put, it is important because employees don’t want any monitoring software to capture their private data and keep record of it.  Employees consider it as a personal privacy invasion!

A manager’s core role is to monitor his employees in the workplace on a daily basis to ensure everyone is working efficiently. It is completely unrealistic to expect employees to work exactly as you expect them to without ever supervising them. The owners or management of any successful company wants to know what staff are doing during office hours and how productively they use their time. No one can possibly give a clear answer to these queries unless they track the work activity of their employees.

You can visually monitor your employees when they are working in the office. Observing them directly is effective to gauge everyone’s attitudes in order to quickly spot a problem. But even if you shadow your employees it is almost impossible for you to do it on a regular basis, especially for a large number of employees. Plus this constant checking can also demotivate employees in many ways. On the other hand, visual monitoring does not work for remote teams, in such situations, monitoring software with a time tracking feature can help you track the progress and performance of your office and remote employees.

Monitoring employees’ work activity in the workplace is a key to success for any company. With the latest technology and use of software, businesses can easily and efficiently monitor employees. Monitoring employees doesn’t mean that businesses don’t trust their employees, rather verifying the trust is the golden rule that increases mutual understanding between businesses and employees. That is why, businesses are implementing various employee monitoring software to be well informed about employee work status.

Monitoring software can help you track the progress and performance of your workers, without micromanaging them. These software are generally cloud-based allowing managers to track employees on-the go.

Employee efficiency and productivity during their work hours directly impacts business profitability, growth and office morale. To monitor employees or not to monitor? The question is asked by many companies when it comes to managing a dynamic workforce. Monitoring employee computer activities is a tricky process that can lead to several issues regarding employee privacy concerns. So, how can companies know if they have crossed the line in employee monitoring?

Instead of monitoring everything an employee does, companies should set limits to find a balance between the needs of the business and expectation of employees. Tracking employees is crucial to ensure effective time management and maintaining a professional, united and healthy work environment. Some businesses have a Big Brother attitude when they monitor employees, such monitoring is considered a sign of managerial distrust. When done in the right way, the process of tracking and monitoring can be highly effective. Businesses can easily do it without negatively affecting employee morale.

At the end of the day, businesses need to control teams and projects which is an essential workplace practice for growth. Extreme monitoring can cause serious damage to team morale, so the question is how can you do it without spying on employees? In this article we will share our tips for successful monitoring in a legal way that will enhance productivity without damaging employee trust and respect.

What is employee monitoring?

The practice of using software for monitoring employees allows employers to access and track the employee’s computer to evaluate their performance. It lets employers collect data about employee work activities, productivity level, web/app usage, location and many more in order to better understand how efficiently employees use their time. The use of monitoring software has become quite normal in recent times. There are many companies that have employees who work from a distributed location, as well as hourly employees or employees with flexible working contracts. Whatever the mode of work is, with employee monitoring software you can track every activity to a granular level. Consequently, this type of tracking helps you to identify the truly deserving and hardworking employees for promotions or appraisals. You can also identify employees who have an unprofessional attitude during work hours.

The utilization of employee monitoring and time tracking software in a hybrid work environment is a critical issue that must be carefully considered. Companies have been forced to reconsider methods of measuring employee productivity as the adoption of remote working modes has increased.

Every country and state has labor laws that organizations and employers must follow. We will attempt to understand the legality of using employee monitoring and time tracking software in this blog.

Disclaimer: This blog attempts to share information that is available in the public domain. It should not be construed as legal advice. Employee productivity monitoring is not new.

security cameras, GPS tracking, and Manual clock-in swipes have all been used for a long time. The legality of employee monitoring and the resulting privacy concerns is best explained using a few countries for example.

Employee Monitoring in the USA

As per the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) of 1986, employees in the United States have the legal right to monitor the use of computers provided by their employer because it is their own property. It is worth noting that no federal law requires employers to notify employees that their activities on company-provided electronic devices are being monitored.

However, does the ECPA violate employees’ privacy rights? Certain parameters in the ECPA protect employees’ privacy. The ECPA, for example, prohibits the intentional interception of oral, electronic, and wire communication unless an exception is justified.

The Business Motive Exception allows employees to monitor their employees’ oral and electronic communication only if it is done for legitimate business reasons. An example would be recording phone calls between a customer and a bank representative in order to avoid potentially awkward situations in the future.

Moreover, because the law in the United States varies by state, some states require employers to disclose the use of employee monitoring and time tracking software, whereas, in other states, the use of time tracking software is permitted without the explicit consent of the employees.

Let’s look at a couple of other countries.

Employee Monitoring in EU

Companies, according to the European Court of Human Rights, must follow the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) laws, which require them to provide prior notice to employees for monitoring their online communications. Employees must know about been tracked and monitored.

There is, however, an exception. If the company conducts a legitimate interest assessment and is able to demonstrate beyond doubt that there is a need to monitor data without the consent of the employee/s, then tracking provisions can be implemented.

Employers must also conduct a Privacy Impact Assessment prior to implementing any Employee Monitoring Software in order to identify and mitigate any issues that may arise as a result of its implementation. Finally, the GDPR law applies to all companies operating in the European Union, even if they are registered outside the European Union but have employees there.

Employee Monitoring in Australia and Canada

Both countries are grouped together because their employee monitoring laws are straightforward. Employers are required by law to disclose the use of tracking, monitoring, and surveillance measures well in advance. Surveillance laws do not apply in all Australian states, and employees must notify at least 14 days in advance.

Worker pay and benefits should not be disclosed in Canada, and the collection of formal and informal files, as well as the collection of keystrokes, must be done with the knowledge and consent of the employees.

Having observed that many businesses can be run successfully with a team of distributed employees who work from home, it is not surprising that more companies are shifting to flexible or remote working options. In fact, according to a Gartner Inc survey, 82% of business leaders plan to allow their staff to work remotely. Although remote work brings a lot of benefits, it is difficult for many employees to create work life balance when working from home. The mental health of remote workers is also another top priority for companies as they know remote work can only be successful when they can create a great company culture. Remote and flexible working opportunities are highly appreciated by employees, but the loss of office environment causes feelings of isolation which can create serious impacts on mental health.

To protect the wellbeing of your remote team, employers have to foster a more positive and collaborative approach to stand out and create a great employee experience. As a business owner or manager, it is your responsibility to ensure the wellbeing of all your employees no matter from where they work.

Here we highlight how to support the wellbeing of your remote employees and help them perform at their best.

5 simple ways to support the wellbeing of remote workers

1. Establish boundaries between work and personal time

Working from home eliminates the daily commute which means there is nothing to define leaving the office and returning back home at the end of the day, which makes it difficult to separate work time from personal time. Technology has allowed people to maintain seamless communication 24/7, and remote workers have the tendency to be extra responsive to prove their dedication to work. This continuous process of being in touch with work causes employees to feel like they are always in work mode. This increases stress in an employee’s personal life because they have less time to invest in their personal affairs, and less time for their family and friends.

So, creating a boundary between their work life and personal life is extremely important for their wellbeing. Managers must encourage employees to shift gears once their work hours have ended and let them know there is no need to respond to messages until the following work day. Let your employees know you trust them enough; you know about their dedication and the importance of having a good balance — your employees will feel relieved to switch off at the end of the work day to have time for their personal lives. This will help employees to get fully recharged for the next day to perform efficiently.