Why Small Businesses Need Employee Computer Monitoring for Remote Teams

Small companies have experienced a major change in the way they conduct business during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. As the world continues to move online, even smaller businesses are experiencing difficulty monitoring employee performance and productivity.

Read on to learn why small businesses need computer monitoring to oversee and manage remote teams.

Why is it important to monitor employees’ performance?

Employee monitoring can take a variety of forms, but the most practical is computer monitoring software. While it may seem like it’s easier to gauge worker performance while everyone is working onsite, that level of oversight can be deceiving.

It can be easy to assume that “busy” workers are meeting performance standards, but employee computer monitoring provides you with objective data that clearly outlines their progress.

From project management to timekeeping, monitoring software tracks all of the actions that make up your employee’s workday.

Ensuring that your workers are spending their time wisely during work hours, while also meeting productivity expectations and timelines, will directly impact the efficiency of your operation.

What are the main reasons for employee computer monitoring?

Employee monitoring software is a small investment when you consider the risk and profit loss that every company has the potential to face. If you aren’t tracking how your remote employees are working online, you’re likely missing critical information that can impact the security and profitability of your business.

Ultimately, computer monitoring software allows you to come up with solutions proactively based on objective and concrete data. 

Evaluate Worker Performance

How are you currently monitoring the productivity of your employees? If you’re not measuring remote worker production and project turnover digitally, you’re likely losing hours each week – per employee – in wasted time.

Traditional employee monitoring methods use subjective, unreliable data to measure worker productivity. Rather than relying on word alone, computer monitoring uses concrete data metrics to check if employees are staying on tasks and sticking to project timelines.

Useful data measurement tools include:

• Idle time monitoring
• Search engine/browser activity
• Timekeeping
• Project lifecycle tracking

By being able to analyze how employees are actually spending their workdays, you can identify areas of weakness and address behaviors early on that might impact your bottom line.

Meet Compliance Requirements

Did you know that corporate compliance violations cost companies millions of dollars each year? All it takes is one regulatory slip up for your business to incur fines, fees, or even legal action.

Computer monitoring software provides you with a clear, easily accessible way to ensure that your entire staff is adhering to local, state, and federal requirements that pertain to your specific industry.

Dynamic reports and remote device access gives managers a bird’s-eye view of each and every employee’s digital activity. Whether you’re worried that employees are sharing unauthorized credentials, trade secrets, or sensitive information – you can gain peace of mind with:

• Centralized compliance information
• Streamlined and automated administrative processes, which reduces human error
• File and communication monitoring/tracking
• Reinforced education regarding professional industry standards

Improving your staff’s access to regulatory information, while monitoring their online activities, will allow you to tackle this costly issue from all sides.

Improve Group Productivity

Monitoring software is a great way to improve individual time management skills, but it can also increase collaboration and production within and between different teams.

Collaboration is critical for long-term business growth, in part because it facilitates positive company culture and employee satisfaction. Working together seamlessly also reduces strain on the chain of command while adding diversity of ideas and creative innovation. No matter the industry, this is one of the most important growth factors for any company.

Monitoring and collaboration programs give all team members a secure way to share data, projects, files, and ideas. Additionally, cloud-enabled programs give remote employees the ability to access the same resources and accessibility as in-house workers.

Delivery Quality Customer Service

Long response time between your clients and staff might seem insignificant, but low engagement is one of the fastest ways to reduce your consumer base. Using computer monitoring software to simplify recurring tasks and collect data helps businesses improve ongoing processes, which frees up more time to provide a higher level of customer support.

Not only is exceptional customer service important for optimal client retention, but it’s a great way to expand your brand’s pipeline via referrals, reviews, and social media sharing.

Additionally, this can improve your operation from the inside out by reducing time strain and – consequently – worker stress and unhappiness.

Ensure Objective Evaluations

Typically, employee evaluations are based on information collected from the employee or the employer based on physical monitoring and production. But, this information is often inflated or skewed as a result of subjective bias and a lack of concrete reporting.

As more businesses move to a fully remote business model, this level of tracking is nearly impossible and the data collected is often unreliable.

Computer monitoring software provides employers with dynamic, real-time reports based on:

• File sharing and access
• Length of time spent off task or on idle sessions
• Browser and search engine history
• App and program tracking
• Cell phone monitoring
• Keyloggers

Using irrefutable and easy-to-read data reports, you can provide each employee with an objective and fair evaluation no matter where their office is located.

What software do companies use to monitor employees?

Whether your business has one employee or 10,000, remote device protection is paramount to ensure optimal productivity, profitability, and policy adherence in our ever-changing digital workforce.

For the best results, ensure that your computer monitoring software includes certain key features such as time tracking, device monitoring, and cloud-based security.

Regardless of the size of your brand, no company can afford to ignore security and compliance standards. Computer monitoring adds a thick level of security for employees, vendors, and management.

Rebuild or reinforce your corporate infrastructure by using a comprehensive employee computer monitoring platform to manage your remote teams. Try InterGuard today to strengthen and scale your company’s remote working plan from the inside out!