How Are Your Employees Really Spending Their Time?

Years ago, before the advent of the Internet, it was easy for business owners and managers to see precisely how their employees were spending time during work hours. Memos and reports were typed out on either a typewriter or a word processor and hard copies were distributed and tucked away in file cabinets for future reference. If office supplies were needed, an employee had to call a local office supply company or complete an order form and fax it in. If shipments of products or manufacturing parts needed to be tracked, a worker had to make a phone call to the shipping company and inquire about the status. In other words, every move that an employee made during the day could easily be monitored by the worker’s supervisor. Phone calls could be overheard. If memos or reports weren’t being completed on time, it was obvious because there were no paper copies produced.

Since the inception of the Internet in 1995, all that has changed. Today, virtually every business task can be performed using the Internet. While it’s no doubt that this has streamlined many day-to-day business chores, the Internet has also made it extremely challenging for a supervisor to see exactly how productive employees are during working hours. Just think of it: when a worker is sitting in front of a screen all day, using the Internet to perform functions that used to be done over the phone or with a typewriter or word processor, how can you ever really be certain how much time the employee is spending doing productive, business-related work?

Many business owners and managers that are conce
ed about their employees’ level of productivity have turned to Internet monitoring software as a means of tracking what websites each worker is visiting throughout the day and how often. Before the advent of the Internet, it was perfectly acceptable for a supervisor to keep close tabs on each employee’s productivity throughout the day, but in this day and age, all that has changed as well. Now, an Internet usage monitor or Internet monitoring software is considered to be invasive and an intrusion into the employee’s privacy. If you choose to use some form of an Internet usage monitor, you could easily incur the resentment of your staff, making matters even worse.

The fact of the matter is that it’s extremely difficult to really know how each of your employees is spending time during the business day. The vast majority of business owners and managers have come to the realization that many of their employees spend an inordinate amount of time using the Internet for personal reasons, which results in a serious lack of productivity.