Employee monitoring software often appears to be neutral. After all, it appears to dispassionately track employee activity, gather data, analyze it, and display results – without any ‘subjective’ opinions.
Unfortunately this isn’t true, and despite appearing ‘objective’ – employee monitoring is not as fair and unbiased as it seems.
Biased Metrics
One of the main ways that employee monitoring can be biased is based on the metrics it tracks. Typically employee monitoring software such as Controlio will track work hours and categorize the time spent on activities that are ‘productive’ or ‘unproductive. It can then calculate a productivity score for each employee that is based on the time they spend productively.
While technically this data is objective, it can also be biased because not all roles can be measured in the same way. Calculating productivity in this fashion does not take into account the overall output or quality of work. In fact, any one-size-fits-all approach will invariably favor roles with tasks that can be tracked easily.
Arguably one of the more common cases of this bias is when software flags employees as having ‘low activity’ or ‘being idle’ based on their keyboard actions or mouse movements. Although in many cases this is fine, it is definitely not fair for roles that involve brainstorming, paper-based design, or spending time on calls.
Overlooked Contributions
In addition to metrics being biased, they often don’t tell the whole story. Tools like Controlio can track a very wide range of metrics including app usage, browsing history, IM messages, file transfers, emails, keystrokes, screenshots, screen recordings, and more – but that doesn’t necessarily encompass everything.
There are many overlooked contributions and ‘invisible’ tasks that typically can’t be tracked by monitoring tools. For example, employees may spend time organizing team events, taking notes during meetings, or supporting and helping out other employees – none of which would be tracked.
Relying too heavily on the data from monitoring tools increases the risk that such contributions will go unnoticed. Over time employees may even be reluctant to perform these types of tasks as they feel they won’t be rewarded.
“What Can Be Done?”
It should be noted that just because employee monitoring software can be biased – that doesn’t mean you can’t do anything about it. As you may have noticed a lot of the bias that is present is due to its limitations coupled with how it is used.
To make sure employee monitoring is fair, you need to customize the metrics you take into consideration for different roles. On top of that you should also look beyond the numbers and make sure you take the full context of employee contributions into question.
At the end of the day, employee monitoring isn’t intentionally designed to be unfair towards any employees. If it isn’t used well it can definitely be unfair, but if it is used more thoughtfully these issues can be overcome. In fact, with the right approach employee monitoring can be far more objective than other types of employee evaluations.
