The recent rise of powerful employee monitoring software gives employers unprecedented insight into the working patterns and strengths of their employees. Unfortunately, we’ve seen too many organisations embedding monitoring software without assessing its impact on the employee experience, instead viewing it as a means of identifying where staff are not working the required hours or meeting expected productivity goals.
Barclays hit headlines for all the wrong reasons last year when they were fined $1.1billion for implementing software that allowed managers to measure the length of time employees were away from their desks and how long they took to finish tasks. They monitored staff anonymously for 18 months before allegedly enabling functionality in the software that let bosses track employees on an individual basis. One whistle-blower described how employees “became worried to step away from our desks, have full lunch breaks, take bathroom breaks or even get up for water as we are not aware of the repercussions this might have on our statistics.”
Sadly this example of employee distrust isn't a one-off; it is being widely enabled by common features within workplace technology. StandOut CVs insights found that nearly 1 in 10 monitors allow employers to record audio from an employee’s device, while 1 in 5 can access a device’s webcam. Not only does this send a clear message that leadership don’t trust employees but it creates a toxic work environment where employees become resentful of monitoring and suspicious of how the data is being used. And as we’ve seen with Barclays, it can come with severe financial penalties too.
At Emergence, we are user-centric in everything that we do. We focus on using technology to enhance employee experiences and engagement, rather than introduce fear and distrust.
This is where Value Finder comes in. Value Finder is a combination of AI software and a single specialist consultant to holistically understand how your time and resources are being utilised across systems, processes and people. An Emergence consultant then uses the data collected to design the optimal user experience for employees and customers by identifying opportunities to optimise the skills of employees through process improvement and intelligent automation.
Unlike employee monitoring software, all data collected is fully anonymised and, crucially, we engage employees in the process. We are open about how the software works, what data is collected and how our consultant will use the data to identify pain points and bottlenecks in order to develop a business case for the opportunities for improvement that we uncover.
By taking this open and collaborative approach, employees are involved in the process of building cases to automate manual, time-consuming and repetitive tasks and highlight the areas where their talent and skills can best be utilised. More often than not, we end up making a commercial case for addressing frustrations that employees have raised time and time again because we can definitively assess the impact of these on the bottom line.
Rather than using technology to embed a Big Brother culture, you can set your organisation apart from others by using Value Finder to enhance your employee experience and optimise their skillset, which will only have a positive impact on customer experiences and company culture.
Book a meeting with us HERE to discuss how we can help your business.