Every business owner has the same question on their mind how to balance monitoring with trust? If you monitor too much, employees might feel like you don’t trust them but if you don’t monitor at all, productivity might drop and discipline could suffer. In this article, you will understand why both monitoring and trust are essential and how you can apply them.
What is Employee Trust?
The manager trusts the employee to do the work, and the employee trusts the company that their privacy is completely safe. Together they work in the company.
When there is trust the employee always try to give their best and actually does so. There is no need for micromanagement in this situation. Trust simply means clear expectations plus a fair system.
What is Employee Monitoring?
Employee monitoring means tracking employees working hours throughout the day and observing their progress on tasks. The clear and straightforward purpose of monitoring is to see how much work is being accomplished during working hours. This also helps you understand how to best support your team. If you would like more information about tracking work monitoring you can visit our home page.
When Monitoring is Done Incorrectly
If you think that implementing strict monitoring will increase your company’s productivity, you are completely wrong because it always lowers employee morale.
- Not informing employees that they are being monitored.
- Taking screenshots every minute, which is highly intrusive.
- Monitoring employees’ personal breaks.
- Judging employees solely based on their activity.
All of these things can cause significant harm to companies, such as employees leaving the company or employees working simply to appear busy rather than actually being productive.
Trust Friendly Monitoring in Simple Words
- Transparency comes first
Before monitoring, explain everything about the monitoring process to the employee.
- Screenshots
When you monitor employees and your tool takes screenshots, you need to set the frequency so that screenshots are not taken after working hours or during breaks as these may contain personal information.
- Micromanagement
Commenting on every little detail or tracking every second is not effective monitoring. For better results, set weekly or monthly goals. If you learn more about monitoring without micromanagement, please read our blog page.
Balance Matters More for Remote Teams
This often happens with remote employees because they aren’t sitting in the office they are in different locations and managers think if the employees are actually working. This is where strict monitoring begins.
- The software clearly defines tasks and keeps activity tracking simple, focusing only on work-related activities.
- It is quite clear that managing remote employees is based on the principles of effective communication.
Use Monitoring Support Tool
Employee monitoring tools are used because managers no longer rely on manual monitoring, as it is prone to errors and requires a significant amount of effort. Software based monitoring tools can be reliable but they should be used as support tools not for spying on employees. You can also use WorkDesQ as a supporting tool that focuses solely on work related activities.
Simple Best Practices for Managers
Share clear policies with employees
- Give feedback and also take feedback from employees.
- Prioritize trust above all else.
When employees feel that the system is good and fair. Monitoring becomes automatically acceptable.
Understanding the Employee Point of View
- There should be no doubt about his intentions. Due to some reasons, employees are unable to meet their targets or deadlines. If productivity decreases for a short period perhaps a day or two it should not be considered cheating or laziness.
- Don’t judge my work based on numbers, because when you do quality work, it takes a lot of time, which means you can’t produce a large quantity.
- This will give him time to review his data so he can explain to his manager why it took him so long to complete the task or when the work will be completed.
- If an employee has done exceptionally well during the week or month, their performance report should not just be reviewed but they should also be praised. This will motivate them for their future work.
- If an employee makes a mistake, instead of immediately imposing a punishment, the matter should be discussed first.
- The workload should be distributed properly, because if it is done correctly, everyone will get an equal amount of work, and the entire burden will not fall on just one person.
- Software is a machine that cannot understand human problems such as an employee falling ill experiencing mental stress or facing family problems. The manager needs to understand this.
Conclusion
Balancing employee trust and monitoring cannot be achieved with a single rule or tool.It’s a mindset where managers understand their employees and employees support the monitoring tools. Where trust and monitoring go hand in hand companies consistently grow. Companies should always treat their employees as partners.