Anyone who works remotely surely has come across some form of remote working software, whether implemented by their employer or, as an employer, implementing it in their workplace. Copious studies have gone into determining whether remote tracking is as effective as it is believed to be and if it is even necessary.
Is remote tracking an added chore for employers or supervisors?
When it comes to optimizing a workplace, employers might feel the need to supervise their employees to ensure that they are really putting in the hours and not just wasting company time on their personal activities. This takes away from the time that they can spend on doing something actually conducive to the nature of their work – instead of spending hours reviewing reports on their employee’s tracking data, the time is much better spent on growing the company. While some may argue that a company is unable to grow if their employees are slacking, the truth is that putting together a team that you can trust to work unsupervised is a key benchmark to how scalable a company really is.
At the start of the pandemic when white-collar professionals were all but forced home to work, some employers adopted the practice of having their employees work with their cameras on, live-streaming them working as though they were at the office. However, as technology became more sophisticated, that turned into time-logging platforms or remote working technologies that ‘helped’ employers keep an eye on what they were doing while they worked. But that also means that they have to review those reports and quite possibly spend time during performance reviews with their employees – all of which take up precious time.
Spending money or saving money?
Employers might believe that by investing in these tracking software, they are invariably saving money as they are getting their bang out of every buck. However, surveillance systems might actually be hurting their company not because it is costly to implement and maintain, but because high performance workers might not like being watched, and for every underperforming worker you have to let go, there is one productive worker resigning because they are not comfortable with the amount of surveillance going on. In the long run, this might actually hurt your company because you will have a high turnover rate and you won’t be able to retain talents for long – they might just as easily find another company to work for that monitors less and allows them more freedom with their talents.
According to Haller, “It might not be worth it to monitor an entire organization when you’re only letting go six to 10 people and the same amount of workers, who could be high producers, are leaving because they don’t want to work in an environment where people don’t trust their employees.”
The advantages of using a remote working software
Employers are able to know exactly how many hours on average employees are spending on work and personal activities – a phenomenon now known as “time theft”. In fact, a company in Canada was able to use this data in order to bring their employee to court, resulting in the employee paying back her wages to her employer for slacking.
While this can ‘save’ the company from such slackers, it is also a time-consuming process that may not, quite frankly, be a viable long term solution. Hybrid work structures, company retreats and “workcations” may help improve occasional in-person meeting time. As more employees become accustomed to working from home and working unsupervised, we should be seeing a new generation of self-motivated employees who know exactly how to conduct themselves. But managers are also a part of this process as they communicate their expectations more transparently and efficiently in order to prevent these kind of things from happening.
