Many employers monitor their employees for one reason or another. If you offer the opportunity to work from home, you may be curious as to how employees are using company time. If employees go off-site, such as in the case of drivers, you may wish to keep an eye on their activities so you can improve safety. There are several best practices to follow when doing so.
Use Dash Cams
If your business owns a fleet, you can use dash cams to keep an eye on their activities in the vehicle’s cab. One of the benefits of these cameras is that they help you implement a better safety program. You can determine whether a driver is making frequent stops, what they are doing in the vehicle, and which actions you may need to direct. Make your drivers aware of why you are monitoring them and why you are doing so, and consider offering a rewards program as well. You can review a guide on how to choose the best dash cam installation method for your fleet so you can avoid missing out on important data if installed incorrectly.
Involve All the Relevant Stakeholders
It is easy to choose numbers and make a judgment based on these numbers. But this can lead to poor decision making, as it is too easy to simply react to the information that is not relevant to your productivity or efficiency. If you do want to monitor your employees, consider tracking only necessary and relevant information. Just seeing how many emails are coming in and out will not help you monitor productivity within your team. Instead, consider engaging with stakeholders to see if the metrics you are tracking are the right ones. You might want to work with supervisors, hiring managers, and the employees being monitored. Talk with new and experienced employees to ensure they can still deliver their work and will not have the fear of negative consequences.
Being Transparent
There are simple ways to be a better employer and practicing transparency is certainly one of them. Monitoring may be necessary, but it is important to respect your employees by making sure you are taking the time to communicate what you will be monitoring and why you will be doing so. See if they have any feedback, and implement feedback that is helpful. It is a good idea to share the results with them as well. They should be able to influence any decisions made with the use of this data. Being transparent about everything will ensure employees accept monitoring of their activities.
Leave Room for Growth
There are times when making decisions about your employees’ work ethic based on monitoring is not the right decision. That's because some employees may have personal demands which stretch them thin at certain times. While they may not be performing at the same level as other employees at the moment, you may not want to fire them, as they can still provide a lot of value. In these situations, it is best to focus on these individual’s situations and solutions to their current problems. Avoid threatening them, and try to come up with a creative solution. Perhaps your company will offer assistance with childcare or other resources so employees’ time is not stretched so thin.
