Employee monitoring through spy apps is a highly debatable topic. From the employee's perspective, it infringes on their privacy and indicates a lack of trust from employers. Conversely, employers view it as essential for business safety and productivity. 

However, determining which side is right is not straightforward, as there are many factors to consider, including the ethics of any employer wishing to deploy a spy app for monitoring their staff.

In this article, we will discuss the pros and cons that will help you decide on using a spy app for employee monitoring.

Pros of Monitoring Employees with a Spy App

As a business owner, there are numerous points you can argue in favor of this debate, such as ensuring compliance with company policies and tracking employee productivity. 

Let’s explore them one by one.

1. Increasing Work Productivity

Providing employees with mobile phones for various business purposes has become standard, allowing them to attend to client inquiries via calls, WhatsApp chats, and emails. Additionally, employees involved in sales and marketing receive mobile phones from employers to answer customer calls and queries, which helps boost sales. However, if not monitored, these employees may become unproductive and exhibit tardiness, which can lead to decreased efficiency.

This is where spy apps prove useful; they help enhance employee productivity by monitoring work activities and ensuring that employees do not become complacent during work hours. You can track their phone usage, such as how often they access social media or engage in internet browsing during work hours.

With a spy app, you can identify which social media platforms they frequent, what they discuss on these platforms, and the time spent on each app, thus helping you maintain employee efficiency. Moreover, it can also identify employees who may be overwhelmed with tasks, allowing you to redistribute work and boost overall productivity.

You can monitor if they are managing an excessive number of client interactions via email or social media platforms like WhatsApp. With the aid of spy apps, you can also review their call logs to see how many client or customer calls they handle, providing you with a clearer picture of their workload and competency.

2. Ensuring Compliance with Company Policies

Sometimes, employees may engage in misconduct and fail to adhere to company rules and regulations. They might breach confidentiality, exchange documents improperly, or gossip about internal affairs among different departments.

Monitoring their calls and social media interactions through a spy app enables you to ensure that they do not share documents or important information with colleagues from other departments or friends. 

Additionally, overseeing WhatsApp interactions can help ensure that employees treat each other respectfully, thus fostering an ethical and harmonious atmosphere within your company.

3. Preventing Data Leaks and Insider Threats

Sometimes, employees, intentionally or unintentionally, share confidential company information or policies. This can occur when they discuss work matters with friends or family on their work phones, leading to accidental disclosures of sensitive documents.

Moreover, as a business, you must guard against insider threats where employees might collaborate with competitors or malicious individuals to leak valuable confidential data, such as your strategies for acquiring new projects or sales enhancement plans.

To prevent this from happening, it is crucial to deploy a spy app on employees' work phones and monitor the documents they share via email or social media, especially in interactions with clients, family, or any unauthorized individuals with whom they should not disclose confidential information.

4. Tracking Employees' Work

As a business, it is imperative to track each employee’s work, whether they are in the office or working as field agents. There are various instances when employees claim they have been working hard and following up on leads they received, but the client or customer was stubborn and did not respond politely, acting adversely. This is often cited as a reason for not closing the sale or deal.

Sometimes employees offer excuses for their tardiness, stating that leads were wasted despite their attempts to contact clients or customers who did not respond. They insist they cannot probe too much, which is often just an excuse. By monitoring their calls, messages, and other activities, you can verify whether they genuinely contacted the client or customer.

Additionally, tracking can reveal whether clients or customers are making things difficult for employees, thus helping you assess your employees’ work capacity and honesty. A spy app features tracking of call logs and contacts and can record calls without disrupting either party involved. With this app, you can determine whether the calls made were rejected by the other party. The call recordings allow you to listen in on interactions with clients and customers to assess whether employees behaved poorly, or if it was the customer who made the mistake.

5. Tracking and Improving Resource Management

Deploying a spy app on your employees' work phones enables you to see what each employee is doing in real time. You can assess how well they perform their tasks by ensuring they respond to clients and customers promptly, eliminating any delays from your end. The spy app assists in this by monitoring the flow of messages and calls, providing timestamps for each message and call, along with indications of incoming and outgoing messages.

These are some advantages that can support your case when persuading employees and management to adopt a spy app for employee monitoring.

The Cons of Monitoring Employees With a Spy App

However, some drawbacks may arise during discussions about this decision, particularly concerns your employees may have regarding their privacy, which can negatively impact overall morale. Let’s examine these issues.

1. Privacy Concerns of Employees' Personal Lives

The foremost consideration in deploying a spy app to monitor employees is their privacy. Respecting employee privacy is critical; failing to do so may discourage them from continuing to work with you and can significantly disrupt your organization’s functionality.

It is essential to assure employees that you will not monitor their personal or private data. To build this trust, you should establish an agreement with them. By doing this, you will reassure employees about this new tool, and obtaining their consent will protect you legally and ensure compliance with local laws.

2. Negative Impact on Employees' Morale

Monitoring employees through spy apps can adversely affect morale. Employees may perceive your actions as close surveillance, leading to feelings of micromanagement, which can create stress for some individuals. Others might respond with frustration towards their team leaders or managers due to the constant oversight.

In such cases, it’s crucial to communicate with your employees that the deployment of employee monitoring software is intended for their benefit. Emphasize that it allows you to see how much each person is working and ensures no one is idle. Assure them that this arrangement will facilitate proper and fair work distribution without micromanaging every action.

Remember, cultivating a positive work culture is key to ensuring productivity and motivating employees to give their best. Moreover, it will foster an environment of trust and collaboration between employees and management, promoting deeper mutual understanding.

As a business owner, it is your responsibility to deploy the spy app thoughtfully, balancing monitoring needs with respect for privacy.

3. Potential for Misuse by Management

It’s crucial to consider who will control the spy app panel. This decision should be made with careful consideration of the individual's character, as once personal information falls into the wrong hands, the affected employee could face significant harm, and the repercussions could extend to your company’s reputation as well.

Another potential issue is the risk of discrimination or favoritism among your executives. To prevent any unfair treatment, appoint a neutral person to oversee the monitoring process, and take immediate action against any managerial personnel who exhibit personal biases.

4. Risk of Misinterpretation and Unjust Consequences

When you monitor your employees, it is not possible to go through every message or phone call conversation, and when you read or listen to snippets of the conversation, you may misinterpret some information. This misunderstanding if left uncleared or not discussed with the right personnel, can cause the person you have misunderstood to face repercussions. At best, they may receive unwarranted reprimands, but at worst, they could experience salary deductions, loss of benefits, or even termination.

As an employer, you have to ensure that no innocent employee is falsely accused. This requires appointing trustworthy individuals who have integrity and can perform ethical judgment to analyze those flagged interactions so that they can give unbiased verdicts by understanding the context of each interaction that looks suspicious.

5. Implementation and Monitoring

One significant challenge you might encounter when deploying a spy app is that it can be a hassle to implement. Not only do you need to manage installation on multiple devices, but you also have to handle updates that come with any software, ensuring that every feature you paid for operates effectively. 

The cost of implementing spy apps is another considerable challenge to keep in mind. If you spend a lot on a service but do not receive adequate customer support, it can turn into a disappointing purchase. 

Then there's the task of monitoring. As previously mentioned, you must select the right personnel to oversee the collected data. This choice is critical not only for ensuring unbiased monitoring but also for protecting the safety of that data. 

Final Thoughts

While we debate the pros and cons of employee monitoring, neither side will be beneficial for you as a business owner or for your employees unless you adhere to best practices when using spy apps for monitoring.

Certainly, this approach offers numerous advantages for your business. However, remember that it is your employees who make it successful; ensuring their comfort and convenience can significantly enhance your business outcomes.

On a related note, selecting the right employee monitoring app is crucial. Choosing ONEMONITAR could be a wise decision for your business. First, they are an India-based company, and second, they offer excellent customer support and remote installation for busy clients like you, allowing for a seamless monitoring experience without any hassles.