Employee monitoring vs trust-based remote culture
Many companies use tracking tools to monitor remote employees and their performance during working hours. Such tools become a must-have choice for those organizations that want to have productive and efficient virtual teams. At the same time, such total tracking has disadvantages, which we will discuss in this post.
However, before we start talking about the pros and cons of employee monitoring, let's find out the reasons why companies need to monitor their employees:
- Identify high and low performers. Knowing the best performers helps to encourage them through the bonus program.
- Allocate resources most effectively. Such monitoring helps to know the busiest hours and allocate resources wisely to make the load even.
- Data protection and security. Thorough monitoring helps to prevent unauthorized access to data. It also ensures employees follow the protocol and make fewer mistakes.
Pros and cons of employee monitoring
There are many ways to track remote employees. The tools that can be used for this depend on the activities they are supposed to track. For example, for customer service agents tracking, a special statistic tool that counts the number of customer interactions, missed chats, or calls, the durations of the shift, etc., can be used. However, what are the pros of employee monitoring? Let's answer this question:
- The ability to evaluate employee performance.
- Access to useful data that helps to see the busiest hours and plan employee load evenly.
- Prevent unauthorized access and security issues
At the same time, too much monitoring has a negative impact:
- Damaged morale and trust of employees
- Possible legal issues
- Loss of creativity
- Employee burnout
Pros and cons of trust-based remote culture
Trust-based remote culture is an alternative to employee monitoring. Unlike a strictly monitored environment, employees who work in companies following a trust-based remote culture feel more relaxed and have more opportunities for creativity and implementing their ideas. The advantages of such a culture are obvious:
- Minimal surveillance boosts morale, engagement, and loyalty
- Trust to employees encourages creativity and problem-solving
- Such an approach leads to a higher employee retention rate
However, if you choose a trust-based remote culture, it is important to be more careful when hiring employees and to establish a reliable communication channel to avoid misunderstandings and poor communication.
How Virola Messenger helps boost a trust-based remote culture
Virola corporate messenger is designed to improve and facilitate the working process. All features available with Virola Messenger are tailored to make remote team collaboration more efficient. Virola Messenger combines both the trust-based remote culture and unobtrusive monitoring.
Let's see how you can use Virola Messenger to improve the efficiency of your team collaboration:
- Live avatars can help to see what employees are doing at their desktops and create a teamwork atmosphere.
- Flexible permissions regulate access to certain features and help create communication channels and a secure corporate communication environment.
- Task Board is where team leaders can check the TODO list, arrange the backlog, and view the list of tasks in progress.
- Topic-based group chats make it possible to organize chat rooms for various purposes, e.g. the chat room for daily meetings or the chat room for idle talks.
Conclusion
Employee monitoring or trust-based remote culture? The best choice will be to find a happy medium and combine monitoring with a trust-based company culture. This will enhance creativity and reduce employee burnout, since in a strict monitoring environment, employees keep a high level of productivity only during a short period. The realization that each of your movements is tracked increases the stress level and leads to burnout.
At the same time, unobtrusive monitoring and communication with remote employees help them overcome burnout and feel more relaxed at their workplace.