This now becomes about defining and being guided by the new rules of ethical tracking. Ethical workplace monitoring can, then, become a true strategic differentiator so that some organizational abstractions can be transformed into structurally identified and mapped, or quantified, metrics that replace one-way managerial intuition with two-way progress and data-driven leadership. This is how organizations in the current era can measure, track, and hold accountable high workplace efficiency monitoring without the competency for tracking employee work or being viewed as under monitoring conditions.
THE ETHICAL IMPERATIVE: THE SIGNIFICANCE OF INTENT.
The difference between "good," "smart" monitoring and "bad," intrusive stalking monitoring is not a technological difference. As much as it is all about the intent.
- Unethical intent: using monitoring tools to catch employees making small mistakes, to punish employees for monitoring lower activity, or to pry into personal and private messages, which leads to targets, resentment, or turnover.
- Ethical intent: using monitoring data in an effort to help employees collect monitoring units or time trapped in doing so; or documenting pay intended; or monitoring time logged in connected to workloads in service delivery to customers; or promoting time loading efficiency performance. This is ethical intent monitoring in the workplace. And monitoring with ethical supportive intent is empowering.
The emphasis should be on maximizing group output rather than minimizing individual personal autonomy.
The New Guidelines for How to Trigger Track Employee Activity Ethically
Yet again, three core rules are good practice for ethically leveraging digital workplace tracking in the difficult balance of productivity versus privacy.
Rule 1: Always favor transparency over secrecy.
Transparency is the basis of trust. If employees believed that the rules around tracking were hidden, they would almost always have a sense of being monitored rather than given support.
- Clear Messaging: Publish a definitive policy that is easy to read and understand that succinctly expresses what data is being collected (app name, time active, etc.), how often it is collected (random screenshot of their desktop 3 times an hour, for example), and how that information will be stored.
- The Reason Why: If you are going to monitor an employee's activity, have the business reason to collect the data stated plainly and clearly (i.e., "to confirm billing to a client is accurate," "to ensure that workloads on a project are equitably distributed," or "to ensure protection of IP belonging to the company").
- Employee access to their data: The tool for tracking your identity for your employees will allow your employees access to the data captured from their tracking. This accessibility contributes to the work feeling more collaborative and fair on their part.
Rule 2: Measure Outcomes, Not Just Almost Time
An effective performance management system is evaluating the things that really matter. The objective is their ability to deliver value.
- Contributions/Tasks: The most ethically supportable monitoring occurs when time logged is more directly tied to specific projects and tasks. This protects the ability to contribute effort toward goals, as opposed to just monitoring time, which is indicative of traditional clock-watching.
- No Intrusive Tracking: Avoid micro-tracking like continuous keystrokes, webcam monitoring, and tracking private communications. Build your tracking around broader-sense metrics such as productive versus distractions and your employee's active time and idle time.
- Consider Context: Should an activity point exist in the monitored data that is irregular (e.g., activity is below the average), policy should require the manager to first consider context. The employee may be thinking deeply or turned to a phone call in the middle of their working day, which cannot fairly be considered to be distractive use.
Rule 3: Utilize Data for Growth, and Never Punishment.
Information collected must be utilized for development purposes, thus enabling monitoring to be an employee relations practice, not just a security practice.
- Workflow analysis: Essentially, you can leverage the modern logistic tracking data to target process inefficiencies or bottlenecks at the team level. This assures the employee that the monitoring data is used to correct the workplace system, not the individual.
- Targeted coaching: If an employee's data recommends they have a difficult time focusing, use that insight to develop literature, links, training, or scheduled reading materials. This leads the data to be a monitoring system focused on professional development.
- Reward and recognition: Use the objective data to reward top performers. By establishing it as a system to recognize top performers, all involved will find some fairness in the system.
Ethical Tracking: A Glimpse into Accountability Ahead
Engaging in ethical tracking of employees is not just about compliance; it is vital to building a high-performance culture. When employees can trust the surveillance is clear, fair, and regulatory and only adding value to the work itself, employees will feel empowered over focus and productivity.
By integrating these new processes, your organization can feel secure in achieving the necessary efficiency of workflow improvement without ever sacrificing the personal respect and privacy of your employees.
