The Future of Employee Monitoring Software: What to Expect in the Coming Years

‍Employee productivity tracking software has been a valuable tool for many businesses in recent years, especially given the growing prevalence of remote work and the resulting need for remote performance management. 

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With more businesses considering alternative ways of working, including remote work and 4-day work weeks, the demand for ways of tracking employee data is likely to grow dramatically. 

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Whenever you afford employees more flexibility, there’s a more pressing need to centralize data and monitor KPIs to ensure performance levels remain high.

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So what can you expect in the coming years from productivity tracker software?

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Employee Burnout Prediction

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Off the back of a turbulent few years, you’d expect employee wellbeing rates to be on the up, yet 2023 and the following years are likely to bring yet more turmoil as we approach an economic recession.

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As such, employee burnout is still a significant risk factor for most workplaces.

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When employees have to juggle mounting workloads with increasing financial pressure in their personal lives, it’s inevitable that stress levels will spike in coming years.

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To combat this, it’s critical that you’re able to identify signs of burnout in your company so you can act proactively and intervene before you have a disengaged workforce on your hands.

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AI-Enhanced Employee Tracking

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Employee monitoring software already provides support in this aspect as it allows you to see employee output through time data which lets you evaluate workload distribution. Yet in the coming years, it’s likely that sophisticated AI will further enhance software’s ability to identify concerning trends.

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One day soon, we may see a shift towards smart AI that can detect when an employee is heading for burnout based on the data you’ve collected on them. Notifying you when an employee may be close to burnout could make all the difference when it comes to managing your workforce.

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What’s more, this type of predictive technology could also let you know when an employee is deserving of a promotion or bonus for their continued hard work. 

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This simple AI implementation could be a gamechanger in the future of employee website monitoring software; truly allowing you to keep your finger on the pulse of workforce performance by monitoring employee online activity.

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Smart AI

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Currently, most employee monitoring solutions provide you with an overview of the current landscape with regard to your workforce.

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They’ll show you a detailed picture of what works and what doesn't through amassing time data and collating it into company productivity reports. In the future, employee monitoring solutions will go a step further and provide suggestions for changes you can make based on the data you collect.

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Suggested Changes

Just as writing aids will evaluate your work and present you with suggestions for how you can improve the tone of voice, grammar, and sentence structure, the best pc activity monitoring software solutions will soon offer a similar service.

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Imagine if, simply by having software running in the background on your employees’ computers, you could completely revolutionize the way you work and optimize for productivity.

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With a suggested changes feature, your pc monitoring system could tell you:

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• When to redistribute workload to accommodate team members’ strengths

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• What the best times of day to assign work are based on individual productivity

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• Which apps team members use are providing high or low ROI

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More robust data analysis coupled with smart AI is a powerful recipe for sustainable growth and workforce optimization.

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Workforce Trends

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Just as you could see the introduction of smart AI and suggested changes transform the way you optimize for productivity, you could also benefit from further insights into workforce trends.

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For example, turnover and retention rates.

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Turnover Rate Prediction

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It’s possible to imagine a future in which employee monitoring solutions take all the data they’ve collected and use it to forecast future behavior.

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This could be invaluable when it comes to predicting your employee turnover and retention rates.

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It could help you stem the tide of turnover by letting you know in advance when there’s been a concerning change in behavior. With this information, you can pinpoint employees on the precipice of quitting, and see if there’s any way you can get them to change their mind.

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Even if you can’t alter the way they think, knowing when employees are likely to jump ship can help you stay on top of your succession planning and prevent you from being blindsided.

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Further Integration 

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Tech stack used to be a term only web developers and programmers were familiar with as a way of referring to what software they used to complete their work.

These days, everyone from a line manager to an office worker has a tech stack.

With that in mind, it’s likely that the future of employee monitoring software will bring additional integration so that all the data you collect can be used in many ways.

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Compatibility with Apps

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There are dozens of software solutions that support greater productivity, insight, and operational efficiency.

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Here are some examples of the types of apps out there designed to assist business owners and employees:

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• Project management
  
  
• Communication

• Collaboration
  
  
• HR systems
  
  
• Billing and invoicing

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Now imagine if your employee monitoring solution could sync data with all the other apps you use?

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You could carry out performance reviews through Slack conversations with the time data you gather, create accurate invoices directly from the hours spent on a specific project, and use the data to inform the best ways to collaborate in your project management solution.

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More Trackable Data

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Data is the lifeblood of any type of performance tracking, so the more you can gather, the better.

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For monitoring performance of remote teams, user activity tracking solutions rely on timesheets, manual time entry, or automatic time tracking as the primary means of collecting useful individual productivity data. 

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Yet what if there were other ways to collect data to inform and establish performance metrics?

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Wearable technology and facial recognition

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One of the biggest challenges companies face in a remote work environment is establishing performance tracking approaches that work, and combatting cybersecurity threats as most information is stored online in the cloud.

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To address both of these issues, we could see a rise in facial recognition technology which allows employers to clamp down on unauthorized access to sensitive data.

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While it’s more far-fetched, we could also see the introduction of wearable technology or sensors in the future that provide a wealth of additional data on employees. 

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Of course, this would require guarantees of privacy and measures to protect employees, but imagine how complete a productivity picture you could create with access to everything from finger to eye movement one day.

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