Monitoring Employees: Does it Really Boost Productivity?

The Rise of Staff Monitoring

During the pandemic, companies had to resort to remote working arrangements but feared that it could lead to employees slacking off. As such, many made it mandatory for employees to install activity monitoring trackers on their devices despite productivity levels soaring during these times. These trackers are able to record things like keystrokes, number of minutes without activity, time spent on phone etc.

This method of obtaining information to optimize workflow is flawed for two main reasons. Firstly, the privacy of workers is being violated. Not only does the monitoring result in employees behaving differently just to “game’ the system, it shows that the company lacks trust in the employee to do their work properly. Secondly, these metrics are a poor indicator of true productivity. In many industries, people might do their work offline. For example, ideating on a notepad or crunching numbers on a physical calculator. These actions cannot be recorded by the system, even though they might be high-value work. What’s worse is if employees are penalized for this lack of computer activity.

Amplifying the Benefits and Minimizing the Costs

So how do we still optimize the way we gather such relevant content without compromising on employee privacy? It starts by aggregating data to allow full anonymity and privacy for the employees. This shifts the focus to how teams are running, instead of individuals, and how those can be optimized. Addressing the root problem of fragmented workflows instead of getting employees to work harder is key for the company to experience productivity gains. However, this can only be done when there is ample user and work data.

User and work data is often difficult to attain as information about projects and tasks must be input manually. Oftentimes, this is neglected as employees do not have the bandwidth to document every action. With TRIYO, this data is automatically captured and tracked in the audit trail. Although individual data like time taken to complete a project is collected, it is non-invasive as it is merely an overview of the task, unlike the incessant tracking of every keystroke. Employees have wiggle room to do what is required and productive, without the burden of needing to appear busy. Ultimately, TRIYO is able to provide transparency into workflows while being considerate to what employees value – trust and privacy.

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TRIYO’s intelligent data platform integrates, aggregates data from all communication channels across an organization and visualizes the data to generate powerful insights into resource utilization, client engagement and process efficiencies.

Our mission is to help organizations to surface and understand the latent data hidden in all communications channels to provide real-time insights into process gaps and to create efficiencies