Over the last 5 years, the remote workforce has grown by 44% in the US with a significant year-by-year increase too. But the COVID-19 is pushing more corporations to go for remote teams. But this transition largely depends on the industry you are operating in. Before COVID-19, only 7% of the US workforce had the option to work from home. According to the World Economic Forum, the opportunities to telework are even more limited to the public sector (4%) versus 7% of the private industry. This is because some jobs, by nature, are difficult to perform away from a standard worksite.
Where it’s possible (usually in the knowledge sector: IT managers, financial analysts, accountants, executives), businesses are pushing to get more options for telework. But those who have recently gone online are still figuring out the norms of doing business remotely.
One key aspect of teleworking is ensuring employee productivity. While goal-based daily tasks can avoid the need to monitor, many on-demand and 24/7 service industries require monitoring of employees to ensure their availability remotely.
For remote employees, companies need to monitor their computers and phones that are officially issued for work. But many corporations only rely on time tracking tools for PCs. But that’s the job half done only. According to a 2020 survey, employees spend around an hour daily on their phones for unproductive activities. This may not sound a lot. But this is on top of the time employees waste on their computers.
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Who is responsible for the elimination of employee distractions?
While it’s the responsibility of the workforce not to engage in unproductive acts during work, especially while working from home, it doesn’t work like that. If it was that simple, there wouldn’t have been any surveillance in the workplace at all.
And it’s not only the dishonest employees who waste their time at work. Even some very committed employees might not notice wasting their time unless that realization is made. And that epiphany comes from work surveillance.
For corporations, they have many responsibilities regarding employee monitoring. We’ll address those but first, let’s look into the best phone monitoring app and how to use it to avoid landing in hot water, aka lawsuits.
Xnspy
Xnspy is the leading software for monitoring for Android and iOS devices. However, the software isn’t just used in an office but a home setting too. Therefore, it’s necessary to know which features are fine to use while monitoring your employees and which aren’t. Also, note that while there aren’t any guidelines regarding COVID-19 and employee monitoring, most US states allow for employee surveillance with a considerable amount of freedom.
Features of Xnspy
Xnspy can monitor pretty much everything on a phone, but it’s unnecessary to use all the features. It’s important to address your concerns while monitoring your employee phones and only do what’s required. With Xnspy, you can monitor the following on a cell phone:
Phone calls
The software can automatically record all calls taking place on a cell phone. Employers using Xnspy can also view daily call logs (missed, incoming, outgoing), favorite callers, and time spent on phone calls.
In most US states, employers can monitor company-issued devices without taking their consent. But is it really a good idea? Well, it has its pros and cons. Taking your employees by surprise makes it easy to identify a mole at work but it also makes the office environment less comfortable.
Emails, texts, and social media
Email monitoring has always been in the limelight, but that’s not the entire picture these days. When social media apps weren’t popular enough, emails were the only way to share files. Now, there apps like WhatsApp and many small businesses rely on WhatsApp groups to make announcements and share files. That is why it’s pertinent for employers to monitor employees’ social media apps too. With Xnspy employee monitoring app, they can monitor all popular IM apps, including WhatsApp, Messenger for Facebook, LINE, Kik, Viber, and Skype. Moreover, the carrier texts can’t be ignored either, and Xnspy takes care of that too.
Surround recording
It’s easy for employees to fool time-tracking tools on computers. And while desktop webcam shots are one way to know if they are on their desks, but it’s a highly frowned-upon practice. What’s a lot better is to listen to the surroundings of your employees and see if they are quietly working in a separate room or hanging out in crowds. Your opinion, as an employer, may differ, and you may choose to go with either webcam shots or surround recording, or both, or neither.
Specific Alerts
If you, as an employer, are highly concerned with what kind of data you are accessing on your employees’ phones, it’s better to have the Watchlist Alerts set up. These alerts allow you to receive notifications for only those phone logs that concern your business. For instance, if you wouldn’t want your employees to be doing groceries or taking kids to the park during office hours, you can set geo-location alerts for that.
Browsing history
If your monitoring their phones, knowing their browsing history seems like a good idea too. But this doesn’t your company needs it for sure. Since our company requires employees browsing the internet, it’s possible or them to lose focus and end up being on Amazon or even porn, for the worst.
Time Doctor
Since our teams went remote, we’ve been using Xnspy for their phones and Time Doctor for the computers. The reason we are coming forward and making these recommendations is to save you the immense time we had to spend looking for the best apps. While these are just our recommendations, you are free to pick your own favorites.
Coming back to Time Doctor, we love this software for its non-intrusive nature and also for its affordable price. We’ve been using Time Doctor 2, which is a newer product. The classic version is intrusive and can take webcam shots. The recent version looks more into accurately measuring the productivity of the users.
And it’s easy to set up. The settings page allows you toggle on/off features that you would like to use. At our company, we are only measuring the productivity and time of the employees; no screenshots, no cam shots, or anything. Since Time Doctor is supposed to measure an employee’s working hours, it’s innately intrusive with its popups, making sure you are still working. Based on the rules you’ve put in place for Time Doctor, the software may stop clocking the time if an employee is idle for too long. If you are not monitoring their productivity, it’s easy for employees to deceive the tool by artificially keeping the computer screen on.
Lastly, any time-tracking or monitoring software that you use, it’s up to you how you want to treat your employees. There needs to be a balance. Your employees should know that keeping track of their work and productivity is your right, and respecting their privacy is theirs. If a software program is giving away tons of features, it doesn’t mean you should make your employees guinea pigs and experiment with everything.
