Monitor Employee Phone Usage
It’s legal to track employee location, whether you’re relying on a mobile app like Hubstaff or a GPS device in the car. But since there isn’t a lot of legal precedent, there are a couple measures you can take to stay on the safe side.
Step 1:Provide the tracking equipment. There’s always a lower expectation of privacy when an employee is using company property, rather than personal. So, if you’re going to track a person via smartphone, it’d be wise to pay for the phone.
And it might not be the individual software’s fault—it could be the nature of the system itself. Take video surveillance, which 16% of employers use to monitor employee performance. You can’t "turn off" the recording function for high performers. The same goes for email, phone, and voicemail tracking.
Along similar lines, you shouldn’t monitor every employee in the same way. For example, if you use a screen-monitoring software, you’d probably want to take frequent screenshots for the workers that haven’t proven themselves yet or have given you a reason to distrust them. However, you probably wouldn’t want to take any screenshots for the workers that are extremely dependable.
No. ActivTrak does not have a keylogger feature. Internet Monitoring Software that keylogs is sometimes classified as a virus by antivirus programs. We want things to run smoothly for you, so ActivTrak intentionally does not record or monitor keystrokes. This allows us to stay on the safe lists of all popular antivirus software.
Of course, you’ll also want to account for the type of team you run. If your team is all within one office, then setting up a system that monitors their phone use is much more feasible than if they’re scattered throughout the world. If your employees are constantly traveling to meet clients, using a GPS tracking system is probably the best choice. If most or all of your employees receive an annual salary, rather than an hourly one, consider using an employee monitoring system that’s a little more flexible.
The first feature—plain language—is especially important. If you hide behind legal mumbo-jumbo, your employees will feel like you’re trying to pull one over on them. If you find yourself using unnecessarily abstract or vague terms, rewrite the policy to make it more human.
None of those benefits are realized if you’re assigning tasks to the wrong people. When you know who struggles with what (and conversely, who shines at what), you can hand out tasks appropriately. Sometimes, that means giving the assignment to the person who’s least equipped to handle it, so he can improve. Sometimes (when there’s a time-crunch or the project is really important), that means giving it to the person who can do it in her sleep. You won’t be able to make either decision without great data—which an employee monitoring tool can provide.
When you own the computers and the network your employees are using, you don’t even need to tell them you’re keeping or reading their messages. However, if they’re bringing their personal computers to the office or working from home, establishing an email policy that basically says, “We reserve the right to store and open all electronic communication sent during work hours or from your work email address.”