Monitoring remote employees: implications for HR

Abstract

Purpose More and more organizations have resorted to the employment of monitoring software to keep track of employees’ everyday performance and task completion. The current paper aims to outline the capabilities, pros and cons of monitoring for employees. Several recommendations for Human Resources (HR) professionals are outlined to inform best practice. Design/methodology/approach This paper summarizes recent literature and trends on electronic monitoring aimed at remote workers, focusing specifically on trends observed in the UK and the USA. Findings The number of pros and cons, as well as the resulting recommendations for HR professionals, outline how technology may aid – but also undermine – performance. Originality/value The summary of capabilities, pros and cons represents a snapshot of current monitoring practices. The recommendations will give readers an overview of all the aspects and factors that ought to be considered when monitoring software and related tools are selected.

Open Questions and Tensions in Digital Leadership Research: Why it is time to rethink leadership again

“…While the trend towards remote work is eroding the traditional means of monitoring employees on-site, we can also witness that leaders can increasingly draw on new tools to monitor and control their remote employees (Jeske, 2021). The debate about the new tools of digital surveillance opens up multiple ethical and legal issues (e.g.…”

Remote workers' experiences with electronic monitoring during Covid-19: implications and recommendations

“…The second motive for the implementation of monitoring is to increase performance and identify room for development (Ravid et al, 2020;Tomczak et al, 2018). For example, many employers use monitoring tools to access dashboards that visualize processes, enabling them to assess workflow and delays (Blumenfeld et al, 2020;Jeske, 2021). This can create more transparency and help employees to focus on core tasks (Wang et al, 2021).…”

“…For example, many employers use monitoring tools to access dashboards that visualize processes, enabling them to assess workflow and delays (Blumenfeld et al. , 2020; Jeske, 2021). This can create more transparency and help employees to focus on core tasks (Wang et al.…”

“…The second part of the article focuses on the potential implications as well as practitioner suggestions, which identify how health professionals and practitioners can, together with other stakeholders within their organizations, create more supportive employee experiences as well as connect these to workplace health management. In order to understand the issues around electronic performance monitoring, the next section outlines some of the prepandemic findings about electronic monitoring that demonstrates our current knowledge about the antecedents and effects of electronic monitoring more generally (Jeske, 2021; Jeske and Santuzzi, 2015; Ravid et al. , 2020; Yost et al.…”

“…The emergence, popularity and increasing use of new tools that are installed and running on our work devices mean that employers are now in a situation that grants them a direct "line of sight" and minuteby-minute record concerning everything that their remote employees are doing during work hours (Allyn, 2020;Hern, 2020;Hill, 2020). Of course, some employers have used productivity analytics and employee monitoring on production sites and in offices for decades to keep track of production, monitor performance quality and manage potential risks in the workplace (Jeske, 2021). The emergence of new situational stressors and constraints due to the sudden move to remote working (Bolisani et al, 2020) and limitations caused by lockdowns (and homeschooling for many working parents; Anderson and Kelliher, 2020), in combination with the increasing adoption of new employee monitoring tools in 2020 (Hern, 2020;Morrison, 2020), has created a maelstrom of challenges, which are causing strain for many remote workers (e.g.…”