Company A uses employee monitoring to improve productivity at work.
Company B uses competitive intelligence to discover rival marketing strategies, pricing, and workflows. They combine this with employee monitoring to ensure they’re focusing on the right tasks to stay competitive.
That’s the difference between a successful company and a thriving company. We know which side of the coin we’d rather be on. What about you?
In this article, we cover:
- What employee monitoring is and the benefits
- What competitive intelligence is and how it can help you stay ahead of your competition
- How to leverage competitive intelligence
- Why pair employee monitoring and competitive intelligence for business success
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What is employee monitoring?
Employee monitoring is tracking employee data to measure productivity and optimize workflows. For example, Resume Builder found that 8 in 10 companies track office attendance. This is a basic example of employee monitoring.
Other employee monitoring tools can help protect against data breaches and even provide useful analytics to boost employee workflows.
Using data to monitor employees helps create useful analytics. For example, you may discover that employees are more productive during certain hours of the day—and less productive at other times. You can also see where time is spent during the working day and on what tasks. You can categorize this further into productive and unproductive tasks.
Often, employee monitoring is mistaken for “spying.” However, this is not true. Employee monitoring is not spying but a way to maximize productivity by collecting valuable data to improve workflows.
Despite this, always let your employees know you use monitoring software to stay ethical and avoid a breach of trust.
What is competitive intelligence?
Competitive intelligence is how you collect data from your market and competitors. You can use these valuable insights to make informed decisions, helping you stay ahead of the competition.
An example of competitive intelligence could involve monitoring your different types of competitors and their social media accounts. You can monitor and track their social posts to see what’s working, current trends, and what messaging they’re using—and whether or not it’s working.
The goal of competitive intelligence is not to steal rival ideas—but to better understand what your competitors are doing and how you can either improve or avoid certain strategies.
And the more data you have, the better and more informed decisions you can make.
What are the different types of employee monitoring?
Many types of employee monitoring software exist, from screen recordings to website and social media tracking. And in the age where remote employees are more common, tracking employee productivity is becoming more prominent.
Popular employee monitoring solutions include:
- Project management—tools such as Asana or Monday.com to track projects
- Productivity tracking—how much time you spend on given tasks
- GPS tracking—mostly used for delivery and courier vehicles
- Screen recordings
- Video monitoring
- Keycards
Most organizations use a handful of employee monitoring tools, whether they realize it or not. However, adopting a proactive and conscious approach to employee monitoring can help improve productivity, streamline workflows, and more.
What are the benefits of employee monitoring?
We’ve already touched on a few of the benefits above. But other reasons to use employee monitoring include:
- Optimize employee training and development
- Resolve employee performance issues
- Improved employee accountability
- Improved company data security
- Adherence to company policy
- Better workload management
- Prevent insider threats
- Increased productivity
Disadvantages of employee monitoring and how to address them
Despite the many advantages of employee monitoring, it goes without saying that there are a few potential downsides. Most of which are related to a lack of privacy.
Below, we highlight several disadvantages of employee monitoring and how you can address these at work.
Invasion of employee privacy
43% of employees know their employer monitors their online activity, and a further 68% say there’s at least one thing they’d be embarrassed to have their employee monitor, reports Forbes.
When you monitor employees, this can often be seen as an invasion of privacy. This is especially true when taken to an excessive level, such as viewing screens at work. In a way, it’s a type of micromanaging.
However, regular employee monitoring where you collect data on time spent on tasks and workflow, helps improve productivity and employee engagement.
To avoid breach of privacy and to remain completely ethical, inform employees on how you intend to monitor their work.
Increased employee stress and anxiety
If someone was to stare at you and not look away, you’d likely feel stressed and anxious.
This is how some employees feel when you monitor their work. Because they know they are being monitored, this can increase stress and anxiety, perhaps increasing the risk of burnout.
Data shows 56% of workers who are monitored feel tense or stressed at work, compared to 40% who are not monitored. Furthermore, monitored employees report worse mental health, as stated by the American Psychological Association.
To address this potential pitfall, avoid actively monitoring and instead rely on reporting. And let your employees know this!
A conveyed lack of trust
Finally, employees can view monitoring as a lack of trust—you don’t trust them to do their job, even if this is not the case.
Avoid being invasive, and be transparent on how you intend to monitor. Let them know you’re using it for analytical and data purposes, not to see how they spend every waking hour at work. This will provide some peace of mind.
How to leverage competitive intelligence for better employee monitoring
Competitive intelligence and employee monitoring go hand in hand. You can leverage competitive intelligence to collect data on your competitors’ best workflow practices to improve your workflow.
Furthermore, competitive intelligence data, such as current social media and marketing trends, allows you to allocate tasks to employees to keep up with your competition. You can then monitor task performance and adherence using employee monitoring tools to optimize outcomes.
You can also use competitive intelligence data to:
- Set clearer workout goals for your employees
- Identify gaps in training and professional development
- Avoid compliance failures and insider threats
Leveraging competitive intelligence allows you to stay ahead by making sure your employees work on the right tasks properly.
What tools to use for employee monitoring
When evaluating the technology options you want to adopt, it’s important to assess the effectiveness of new tools. Also, consider how these can be integrated with existing ones. Make sure to select a comprehensive employee monitoring software that aligns with your needs and goals.
For example, while it’s great to have access to real-time visibility, including options to watch screens, if you’re more focused on data reporting to improve productivity, you can exclude certain tools from your list.
We’ve gathered together numerous top employee monitoring tools so you can leverage competitive intelligence to get the most out of your employees.
Connecteam
Employee time tracking apps provide precise data on how time is spent across various tasks and projects. By analyzing this data in the context of competitive benchmarks and industry best practices, organizations can identify areas for improvement, optimize productivity, and implement more effective time management strategies.
For instance, if competitors are achieving higher efficiency through specific time-tracking methods, adopting similar approaches or enhancing existing practices can help an organization stay competitive. Thus, integrating competitive intelligence with time-tracking data enables more informed decision-making and strategic adjustments, ensuring that employee monitoring practices are both cutting-edge and aligned with industry standards.
ActivTrak
You can see how employees spend their time to improve workflow. You can even see real-time visibility and team activity, enabling you to optimize productivity.
Similar to Connecteam, you can track time spent on tasks. You can then compare time spent vs. outcomes to assess whether certain tasks are worth spending time on. Again, you can compare your data to industry benchmarks or your competition to improve productivity.
ActivTrak helps managers better balance workloads, increase efficiency, and support healthy work habits across teams and individuals, regardless of location. You can also spot early signs of disengagement and burnout, which, if left unattended, can be costly.
DeskTime
A more basic employee monitoring software, DeskTime helps you run your organization smoothly, whether you have a physical office or multiple employees scattered worldwide. Time tracking is automatic and allows you to optimize resources better. You can see project costs, assign hourly rates (excellent for freelancers), and better control expenses.
Unkover
This is the only software on our list that is not for employee monitoring. Instead, Unkover is an artificial intelligence (AI) driven competitive intelligence tool—it helps you find useful information on your competitors and in your market to make informed decisions.
For example, you can discover competitor pricing, even when you can’t find it on their website. This allows you to adjust your pricing as needed to remain competitive.
Other examples of data Unkover can collect include:
- Search engine optimization gaps and opportunities
- Company acquisitions and exits
- Messaging and branding
- Customer review data
- Press mentions
- Funding rounds
The more data you have, the better decisions you can make. This also includes avoiding costly mistakes, allowing you to get the most out of your resources. Moreover, you can leverage this data to allocate new tasks to employees and manage the effectiveness of monitoring software.
Key takeaways
- Employee monitoring is the tracking of data and analytics to improve productivity and workflows
- Monitoring methods include time tracking, real-time visibility, and project management software
- Use competitive intelligence to assign tasks to employees and monitor for the best results
- Compare your analytics to industry standards and adapt as needed to improve efficiency
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