Top 3 Alternatives for Monitoring Employee Online Activity

Now, most of us know that employees spend about one to three hours every day just surfing on the web for personal business in their office. Various studies are based on the employee self-reported data; the productivity loss is a great concern for employers.

Commonly, most employees spend wasting time doing online shopping, banking, visiting sports sites, paying bills, etc. With some of the major employees, there are certain activities that they do during lunch and break.

Why Employers Monitor Online Behavior?

Employers feel that employee surveillance is important for employee productivity, especially for legal reasons. The safety of the company details and to prevent an environment of harassment is some of the major reasons why they prefer to monitor employees.

Also, there are other primary reasons why employers end up monitoring the internet behavior of their employees at the work. This is based on the organization and its employees. Here the key aspect is productivity.

Most Employers Are Concerned About Surfing the Web at Work

Additionally, there are concerns about the types of websites employees visit at their work. This includes various additional concerns that can motivate employers to begin monitoring employees who surf the web at work.

As per AMA’s Manny Avramidis, employee surveillance is quite inevitable. This is due to the technology as it becomes cheaper. As per him, where employers fall short, is where they need to tell employees that they are monitored. However, they won’t be able to describe how the behavior can turn out to be or not.

Alternatives to Employee Monitoring

The three ways are –

► Create a solid internet and email policy that can provide employees with clear expectations regarding the employers’ stance regarding personal time online at work. Well, this policy can avoid certain activities and even site visitations without making employees feel like criminals.

► Communicating the policy using various examples to make sure that employees are not confused regarding the requirements. Here it even includes continuous communication about your expectations and addressing employees individually that might take advantage of the employer’s time.

► Training the managers and supervisors regarding the necessity of maintaining and establishing the policies and expectations of the workplace. You can train employers for recognizing when an employee would be abusing the internet time or websites right at work.

Conclusion

Monitor what their employees do would sometimes make employees waste their energy and that too worried about whether they are doing is acceptable and also if it encourages the 9 to 5 mentality.