Source: Workexaminer

In most cases computer monitoring software is used to track the activities of employees and identify instance where time is being wasted on personal activities. While doing that can definitely help to increase productivity by cutting down on time wastage, it is possible to conversely track and identify employees that are productive instead and incentivize it to encourage others to follow suit.

Tracking Productive Employees

The data that computer monitoring software provides can just as easily be used to identify productive employees as unproductive ones. Essentially all that is needed is to look at the opposite metrics and track employees that are working in a manner that meets or exceeds expectations.

In short you will want to track employees that come in to work on time or early, are active on their computers, rarely carry out activities that aren’t work related, and so on. While some of those metrics can be a bit subjective, overall it should help you to determine how much time an employee spends working.

To more accurately track productivity and efficiency, that data can then be compared and contrasted against their work performance. If an employee seems to be working a lot but their performance and output doesn’t match then that may be suspicious. On the other hand an employee who seems to be working a lot and consistently performs well is definitely being productive.

Incentivizing Productivity

Simply put computer monitoring software will provide you with the data that you need to determine whether employees are being productive. After that it is a question of incentivizing that productivity by providing said employees with additional perks, bonuses, or other forms of benefits.

At the end of the day the goal should be to provide some form of reward to employees who are productive in order to encourage others to follow suit. To improve on that further it is possible to come up with a more structured and formal incentive system, which will give employees something concrete to work towards. Additionally details of the incentive system (structured or otherwise) should be circulated so that employees are aware of what it entails.

Part of the reason why incentivizing productivity is so effective is the fact that it is likely to be better received by employees as opposed to a system that penalizes them instead. Because of that it can promote a more positive work culture that in turn can help to increase overall productivity as well.

It should be noted that it is possible to both incentivize productivity and at the same time track time that is being wasted in a dual-pronged approach. Seeing as computer monitoring software can help on both fronts, it is something that is worth considering as it can help to maximize productivity if carried out right.

All said and done however it’s like the saying goes, “You catch more flies with honey than vinegar,” which is why incentivizing productivity is tends to be more effective.

By Eddy

Eddy is the editorial columnist in Business Fundas, and oversees partner relationships. He posts articles of partners on various topics related to strategy, marketing, supply chain, technology management, social media, e-business, finance, economics and operations management. The articles posted are copyrighted under a Creative Commons unported license 4.0. To contact him, please direct your emails to [email protected].