Boss is watching: More takers for tools to monitor employees

To be sure, the demand for monitoring software is the highest in information technology (IT), fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG), banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) and other tech-focused industries. (Illustration by Suneesh Kalarickal)

Employee-monitoring software firms are witnessing up to 100 percent growth in companies availing the services, implying how India Inc is striving to streamline human resources (HR) tasks, reducing manual work and errors.

Despite the increasing narrative around return to office and building trust between employers and employees, HR Software-as-a-Services (SaaS) firms have witnessed that companies continue to use monitoring software ranging from Time Tracking Solution to Productivity Analysis.

These are technologies that track and keep records of the activities of employees in real time. Some even have a dashboard showcasing what a specific employee is up to by mirroring his/her work system (laptop/PC) in another designated system.

For instance, the Time Tracking Solution offered by TrackOlap assesses productivity by recording and presenting insights into how individuals utilise their work hours. It offers organisations the means to monitor and scrutinise the allocation of employee time across various tasks and projects.

Additionally, it includes a feature that captures screenshots during working hours to visually represent employee work activities. To further enhance productivity, the solution provides details about the specific applications and websites employees use during their work hours.

"There have been instances where companies, HR departments, or clients have expressed concerns or complaints about remote employees potentially slacking off. The shift to remote/hybrid work prompted a significant adjustment in work dynamics," Udit Agarwal, Founder and CEO of TrackOlap, told Moneycontrol.

Which industry is leading?

While productivity analysis is one of the popular tools used by India Inc, Employee Behavior Analytics and Employee Records and Payroll are also equally in demand.

They mostly focus on reducing the manual labour of the HR department from the transactional tasks and deploying them on other employee-centric initiatives.

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To be sure, the demand for monitoring software is the highest in information technology (IT), fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG), banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) and other tech-focused industries.

“The demand for monitoring software is maximum in IT and business process outsourcing (BPO) industries. Mostly, junior white-collar employees are the ones who are monitored. I think it has to do with the fact that the company bills their time, and they want to know that such billing is accurate,” said Chayan Mukhopadhyay, Co-Founder of Qandle.

In addition, tech firms are in growth mode and as businesses grow, managing HR processes manually becomes increasingly complex – tech-enabled monitoring solutions are scalable, making it easier for organisations to expand their workforce without a proportional increase in managerial/admin staff, he added.

Independence vs monitoring

Policies such as unlimited leave policy, feedback over assessments, and maximum flexibility have taken centre stage in the post-pandemic world. However, the rising number of companies availing employee-monitoring services cast a different picture.

Still, industry leaders say it's all about how companies are communicating the larger purpose of monitoring services: enhance productivity and protect data. Further, they say assessment becomes more objective and supported by data.

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“Using data fairly and objectively can build trust. For example, recognising and rewarding high-performing employees based on data-driven insights demonstrates fairness in decision-making,” said Deepa Kotwani, CEO of EmpMonitor.

On the productivity side, Teramind has observed that 30 percent of a given workforce can be underutilised, resulting in a massive hole in the firm’s bottom line. On the security side, a single malicious unmonitored insider can take down an entire company in days, as recent headlines have consistently demonstrated.

“Monitoring without over-monitoring is a tricky balance, and something that very few software services are nuanced enough to properly enable, said Ilya Kleyman, Chief Marketing Officer at Teramind, adding, “The category as a whole will continue to grow, but employee trust will be predicated on striking that appropriate balance.”