Employees wary of monitoring software, but only half would opt out

Bosses in SMEs may be considering monitoring software for their remote workers. Before they do, they should know what employees really think.

With more and more employees working remotely compared to pre-pandemic levels, employers are looking at new tools and techniques to manage them. One digital technology that can help is employee monitoring software, but deploying it is not without its challenges.

Employees may not be comfortable being monitored via their computers or phones, even when those devices are provided by their employer. If staff see the move as an invasion of privacy, small to midsize enterprises (SMEs) risk lowering morale and losing talented team members. 

But employee monitoring software doesn’t necessarily mean spying on people’s browsing habits. It is a versatile technology that can be used to track attendance, tasks, and performance. It can save employees time by automatically logging data about their work so they can get on with their job.

SMEs should understand all aspects of the issue before making a decision. So, to understand how workers in the UK view the situation, we surveyed over 1,000 employees and managers at SMEs. In this article, we mainly focus on monitoring software as it affects employees. In part two, we will explore the topic from a management perspective. 

You can scroll down to the bottom of this article for a full methodology.

37% of SMEs use employee monitoring software

Since the pandemic began, remote and hybrid working have become more common. What began as a requirement due to social distancing regulations is now the norm in many SMEs across the UK. 47% of the people in our survey work either fully remotely (15%) or in a hybrid model (32%)— spending some days in the office and some at home.

Having potentially half their staff out of the workplace presents SMEs with an obvious challenge: how can they maintain an overview of what teams are doing when not everyone is in the same place? Many use communication tools, staying connected via video chat, email, or instant messaging. But some companies have installed employee monitoring software.

Among the 915 employees in our survey (a group that excludes top executive managers and business owners), 37% say their company uses employee monitoring software. In the majority of cases, this was brought in after the COVID-19 pandemic began.

Of those employees whose companies use monitoring software, one-quarter (25%) use the tools to monitor others, but they are not monitored themselves. (Note: for the purposes of this research, we classed these as managers for future questions and they did not participate in the questions for employees.) 54% said they are monitored themselves, while also monitoring others. 

Overall, a fairly low percentage of employees are monitored without having the power to monitor others. Of the employees who work at companies that use employee monitoring tools, only 21% fall into this category.

Most employees say they feel trusted at work

The use of employee monitoring software may suggest a lack of trust on the part of bosses. However, the general sentiment of employees overall in our survey is that they feel trusted in their jobs and that the level of oversight by management is about right.

When asked to rate on a scale of one to five their manager’s level of trust towards their commitment to perform daily work tasks, 43% of less senior employees (those with no direct reports) gave top marks (‘very trusting’). Another 34% rated their manager’s trust level as a four out of five. Moreover, a majority (60%) said their supervisor got the balance ‘just right’ between over- and under-management.

These workers also reported feeling trusted by bosses when it comes to making sensible decisions about how they spend their work time. On the whole, more felt comfortable than uncomfortable about taking their allotted breaks from work, leaving on time at the end of the working day, and performing non-work tasks during work hours. Although a significant proportion (38%) said they felt uncomfortable with the latter.

Attendance tracking is the most common use for employee monitoring software

The uses of employee monitoring tools are as varied as the jobs that employees can do. The software can be used to clock workers in and out of shifts, track vehicles, and help employees manage tasks, for example. 

The most common use case that monitored employees in our survey consented to was attendance tracking (46%), including login/logout time, active/idle time, attendance, and sick days. Time management (including total time spent on individual tasks, time spent on projects, work calendar) was also common, with 35% consenting to the monitoring of it. So was monitoring of digital communications, such as email, instant chat, and video conferencing, consented to by 32%.

Employees do see some benefits to monitoring software. Among the group as a whole (those who are monitored and those who are not), more than one-third (35%) said that mistakes can be caught before they escalate. A similar number (34%) cited the fact that employers have more visibility of high and low work performers as an advantage. And 32% liked that managers can delegate work easier based on staff workload.

Where employee monitoring works best (and where it falls down)

SMEs that want to roll out monitoring software should consider how comfortable their workforce is with it. Our survey found that employees (both those who are currently monitored and those who are not) showed differing levels of comfort depending on how the tools are being used.

At one end of the scale, employees reported feeling comfortable overall with monitoring of attendance tracking (74%), workload management (68%), and time management (57%). On the other hand, 68% were uncomfortable with the idea of their workspace being monitored via video surveillance through webcams, time-lapse photos, or screenshots. 63% would not feel comfortable with GPS and vehicle tracking, and 63% do not like the idea of their employer monitoring their use of personal social media accounts.

Employees appear to see a difference between tracking performance to help with business efficiency and surveillance or personal activity tracking.

SMEs should consider where the software makes sense in their organisation and how employees might react. There may be a useful distinction here between monitoring quantity and quality. Employees may be more open to the idea of having the quantity of their work monitored (deliveries per hour, parts produced in a day, tickets to resolve, log in and out times) rather than agreeing to general observation of their internet use or whether their mouse is idle, for example. If the monitoring helps them do their job, they are more likely to see value in it.

More than half would opt-out of monitoring if they could

Although staff can see some benefits, their views on monitoring software tend towards the negative.

According to employees themselves, the impact on productivity and performance is debatable. Among employees (monitored and not), a plurality (43%) said that knowing they were being monitored through software makes (or would make) them feel less motivated. Only 15% said it improves (or would improve) their motivation.

Similarly, most (55%) said that monitoring through software has (or would have) no impact on how hard they work. 23% said it makes them (or would make them) work harder, and 23% said it makes them (or would make them) work less hard. 58% said it decreases (or would decrease) their morale.

Tellingly, more than half (53%) say they would opt out of being monitored, given the choice.

Employees’ biggest issue with monitoring software is the invasion of privacy that comes with it. This was cited as a concern by 58%. Other major misgivings include the negative impact on trust (cited by 51%), the increased stress it can cause (48%), and the way it can affect morale (46%).

If an SME’s primary driver for deploying employee monitoring software is to make teams more productive and motivated, they might want to reconsider their approach. The software does not seem to have that effect, according to employees themselves.

In summary: employees see some value in monitoring, but only in specific contexts

While the findings in this survey suggest that employees feel negatively towards employee monitoring software, there is an indication that they see value in it. When used to track how well they are doing their job, in an easily understandable and quantifiable way, employees seem more open to the concept. 

When monitoring software is used to spy on their habits in ways that don’t obviously correlate to the outcome of their work, this may affect morale and motivation to the point where deploying it is counterproductive. SMEs should factor this information into their decision-making when looking at employee monitoring software for remote or hybrid workers.

Next time, we will see what managers think of these tools from a business perspective and whether they share employee scepticism towards monitoring software.