Digital Monitoring? It’s Great and Helpful, Under the Right Circumstances

Digital monitoring is a bit of a contentious topic in business, but according to a survey from Gartner, it might not be as contentious of a topic as previously thought. In fact, employees are often in favor of digital monitoring under the appropriate circumstances, as long as it doesn’t get in the way of their jobs.

This survey from Gartner found that 96% of workers would accept electronic monitoring of their work activity in exchange for other opportunities, like training and career development. Furthermore, 33% of workers would accept monitoring if it helped them perform their jobs more effectively, and 30% would do so if it meant more proactive IT support. These numbers are telling in a lot of ways.

The survey examined 4,861 full-time knowledge workers using digital technology from September 2022 to November 2022. The workers surveyed were employed by companies with more than 100 employees, and these companies were based in the United States, United Kingdom, India, and China. Whether or not employees supported monitoring largely depended on the type of monitoring being done. Those who supported the monitoring were only in favor if it wasn’t being done for the sake of catching employees who weren’t working to the best of their ability or catching them not coming to the office. The stipulation of monitoring is that it needs to be done with the sake of helping employees work toward goals and outcomes.

In particular, the study highlights just why monitoring can be effective for IT teams. Lane Severson, a Gartner senior director analyst researching digital employee experiences, argues in the report that IT administrators can more effectively identify points of “digital friction” through the use of digital monitoring, something which enables teams to better optimize for productivity and ensure operations are going smoothly. Here are the three types of digital friction that monitoring can help fight against:

• Application friction: A business’ applications are not working properly, leading to your employees not being able to perform their duties.
• Skills friction: The applications are working properly, but the employee does not have the skills or knowledge to make proper use of them.
• Process friction: A business’ applications are working properly and the employees know how to use them, but the processes associated with that application conflict with getting the work done.

If you want your business to thrive, Washington Works can help to ensure that your technology is supporting your employees in a way which enables success. To learn more about what we can do for your business, reach out to Washington Works at 301-571-5040.