Monitoring employees jeopardizes trust
The increase in remote work requires new ways to keep track of performance and results - but not just by counting keystrokes and time at the desk. Monitoring measures jeopardize employee trust and encourage turnover.
Those who want to assess the performance and results of their employees in the home office should exercise caution when using monitoring software. VMware, a leading manufacturer of enterprise software, has published a report entitled "The Virtual Floorplan: New Rules for a New Era of Work" conducted a global study on the new era of work. It shows that the rising performance of employees and the trust built with the new hybrid working models could be jeopardized by the increasing implementation of remote monitoring measures.
Employee monitoring tools widely used
The survey was conducted by the market research company Vanson Bourne. It shows that 68 percent of European companies have either introduced or plan to introduce measures to monitor employee productivity since the shift to hybrid working. These measures include email monitoring (42%), collaboration tools (42%) and web browsing (38%), as well as video surveillance (28%), webcams (27%) and keylogger software (24%). However, 43 percent of organizations that have already implemented device monitoring and 46 percent of those currently doing so are seeing increased or even dramatically increased employee turnover.
Employees notice stronger evaluation of their performance
The study results suggest that companies need to strike a delicate balance in finding new ways to evaluate employee performance beyond their particular office presence. From an employee perspective, three-quarters (74%) agree that the shift to a flexible work environment has led to their performance - and not in traditional metrics such as time spent in the office - being evaluated more by their employers. In addition, 79% of employees believe that telecommuting technologies have enabled them to work more efficiently than before. 72% of the companies had to develop new methods to measure employee productivity. These companies achieved the new approach to controlling productivity through the use of performance-based solutions, such as regular meetings with managers to discuss workload (55%), the use of new project management software (47%), and the evaluation of output and agreed-upon outcomes (53%).
Flexible working environments require new measurement methods
But now that immediate employees are not necessarily sitting a few offices away, employers are developing new ways to monitor and quantify employee productivity. Nearly six in 10 employees (57%) understand that their company has had to develop new ways to monitor productivity as it shifts to hybrid work arrangements, but transparency remains critical. A quarter of employees (25%) do not know if their company has implemented systems to monitor productivity on their devices.
"Digital workspace tools enable people to work from anywhere, and our surveys show that employees feel valued and are more confident. A lack of transparency, surreptitious measurement and hidden control can quickly erode employee trust and lead to talented and motivated employees preferring to quit in a highly competitive and challenging skills market," Peter Trawnicek, Country Manager, VMware Austria, commented on the findings.
