Spying on Your Employees? Better Understand the Law First. The emergence of remote working conditions presented employers with a new plight – employee activity tracking. Tracking exposure in an office setting was quite easy, thus monitoring employees at home raises moral and legal issues. Microsoft Teams, already widely used in remote working conditions, is usually included in this picture.
These questions include what would-be employers are able to track while on Teams and would-be employees are spying the risks of being monitored too much. Further, is support for these tools as a method of managerial support needed?
What Does Workplace Monitoring Mean in HR?
Employee monitoring means these tools and practices employed by employers in the latter’s efforts to manage staff and or workplace activities. Stereotypical ways to fulfill such functions include the use of CCTV, vulnerability trackers, and employee task recording buoys.
In the case of remote work however, the other factors include the use of communications such as Microsoft Teams directly where employers can scoop data from employees which include chat, meetings information and file usage.
Is it Possible for Employers to Monitor Employees via Microsoft Teams?
To be very clear about this, the answer is in the affirmative but limited to a certain extent. Microsoft Teams has specific features which allow businesses to have assurance with respect to security and compliance. Unfortunately, everything done on the platform is exposed to admins, this includes;
- Messages exchanged via chat (Banned topics or deleted ‘conversations’)
- Activities like adding or removal of teams
- Meeting requests acceptance, rejection or other relevant meeting details subject–data and duration.
- Files that related to teams that are associated with onedrive or sharepoint
- Information related to login like IP address, device and operating system.
Applications which employ teams
Visibly of such information intends that business operational activities need to be protected, on the other hand, it raises issues related to privacy and the degree of trust that exists between employers and employees.
Is Monitoring Employees via Microsoft Teams Necessary?
There is a need to put some measure to employee surveillance monitoring so as not to destroy trust. Just because there is monitoring and every bit of an activity is accounted for, that does not guarantee enhancement in productivity. Instead, companies should aim to enhance trust in an organization using the following approaches:
- Initiatives to enhance employee engagement and recognition
- Setting targets with appropriate feedback mechanisms.
- Managing performance through trust.
- Too much monitoring can demotivate staff; create apathy which is not the aim of monitoring that which seeks to improve productivity.
- Positive Aspects and Negative Aspects of Microsoft Teams Monitoring
Positive Aspects
Balance of assignments distribution: For example, one or several beneficiaries workload is analyzed and reasonable goals for performance are defined.
Safety: Unusual conducts are recognized to avert insecurity challenges.
Transparency: Enables more equitable management of hours for employers and protects employees from incurring undue blame.
Cons
- Panic Ideas: The employee may feel out of control and overly supervised which can cause a strain on the workers.
- Lesser confidence: Inherent hatred of constant surveillance can create rifts between employers and employees.
- Counterproductive measurement: Time-cards are a great way of making it seem like one’s working and output may be sacrificed.
Microsoft Teams offers various tools for assessing employee performance within teams, but the problem is not how to do it in principle, but rather why so. Instead, you should use tools like Controlio employee monitoring tool to track your employees. Remote surveillance has its advantages in terms of security and workflow enhancement, although too much of it can be detrimental to employees’ faith.