Covid-19 has changed the business ecosystem drastically. The speedy spread of Coronavirus left no choice but to impose a lockdown and strict social distancing measures. As a result, many businesses had to close their offices, government and non-government. The private businesses had to shift their business operation in a compact environment called a home office. So, employees had to attend offices and do their job through the home office. It became the demand of the pandemic situation to go for a home office to ensure the growth of businesses.

However, after the pandemic many employers still think of the home office as a smart idea in terms of productivity. But there is a burning consideration rising in the mind of all employers whether they should monitor their work from employees. It is not necessary to monitor the work-from-home employees.

Why do Employers want to monitor their work-from-home staff?

A study in the US on 1,250 different employers showed that 60% of them were using monitoring software to track the productivity and activity of their work-from-home employees. They cited the reason behind their such activities as in the following:

• They want to make sure their remote employees are not spending their office time on personal staff.
• They want to make sure their work-from-home employees work full office hours.
• They want to check if their remote workers are using home resources for personal staff.
• Moreover, they want to ensure the productivity of their business.

How do employers monitor remote workers?

A recent study the UK stated that one out of three employees has agreed to the urge of employers to monitor them. Additionally, the monitoring rate of employees is higher with remote workers. They disclosed that their activities were monitored by in-home cameras.

Another reliable way of monitoring remote workers is through employee monitoring software. Employees monitoring software are tools that can track the activities of employees both on-site and remotely. The promising things about this software are that they track the activities without notifying the employees. That's why employee monitoring software is the new favorite of employers. There are lots of platforms available on the web that are offering such monitoring software like https://controlio.net.

Controlio is a reliable platform for employee monitoring. It can analyze employee behavior through messaging platforms such as Slack, which raised a $60m third round of financing last month. However, one notable thing is that demand for these monitoring software increased during the Covid-19 situation.

According to a study, the demand for employee monitoring software increased by 54% during the pandemic. As the employers wanted to ensure the productivity of their remote workers during the lockdown. Recently, Microsoft announced that they have added the creased employee surveillance to their Microsoft 365 platform. The reason behind the such activity is to enable Microsoft 365 platform to use machine learning to track employee actions.

The employee monitoring software providers such as Controlio state themselves as workforce analytics platforms. But in reality, they are just providing their corporate customers with the capability to track their employees' activity. These tracking activities include the following:

• Monitoring how the remote workers are using apps,
• Taking random screenshots if an employee's activities seem suspicious.
• Tracking the duration of their employee's activity.

The best thing that employers like about these platforms is that their employees won't notice that they are being monitored.

Is it okay to monitor work-from-home employees?

Sometimes it becomes necessary to monitor your employee's activities if he or she is a new recruit. But you as an employer have to trust the workforce to get the best result from them. An old employee who has been serving you for years deserves to be trusted by you. Your actions should be just directed toward the result and growth of your business. You can ensure it by giving flexibility and freedom to your remote workers. Using monitoring software sometimes, interrupt the privacy of the workers.

Conclusion

It is not a good practice for employers to monitor the activities of their work-from-home employees. But this practice is still increasing among employers due to the availability of monitoring platforms. So, there should be a limitation to using such monitoring software randomly.