Original info from: www.workexaminer.com
In most companies, it falls to the HR department to design and implement performance appraisals for employees – to evaluate their productivity, efficiency and work output. Considering more and more employees are working predominantly on computers, it should come as no surprise that HR monitoring software that can track their activity across various metrics can be particularly useful.
To be more specific, the metrics from monitoring software can help to identify the time that is being spent on computers that actually involves working on assigned projects. Not only can the monitoring software track when employees are active or idle, but it can also determine what applications they are using, whether they are spending work hours on personal activities, and so on.
Tracking these metrics and identifying how employees are spending their time on their computers can help in two main ways:
Time wastage:
- By determining whether time is being spent on personal activities, or if employees’ workstations are idle when they should be working – it is possible to pinpoint any time wastage. That is particularly noteworthy for performance appraisals, especially if the work output is below expectations.
- Considering the amount of potential distractions that go hand in hand with computers and online usage, time wastage is altogether too common in most workplaces. By identifying it as part of a performance appraisal however, action can be taken to arrest it rather than letting it continue to affect productivity.
Efficiency:
- Similarly because monitoring software can help determine the exact amount of time that is spent working, it can then be used to evaluate efficiency. If a substantial amount of time was spent working but the work output was slower than expected, it may be a sign that efficiency is low.
- In some cases it may even be possible to identify the causes behind the inefficiency, and earmark areas that could use improvement. On the other hand it is equally possible to track employees that are being very efficient, and possibly incentivize their productivity to encourage it in others.
Both of these components are valuable parts of performance appraisals and can help employers to identify areas that could use improvement and potential issues as well. On top of that the monitoring software can help to improve certain areas to increase productivity directly by minimizing time wastage.
By this point it should be easy to see just how important the various metrics of data from HR monitoring software can be for performance appraisals. Essentially it can provide greater accuracy to the time that is being spent working on a given project, rather than simply estimating it based on average working hours.
That increased accuracy will allow employers to evaluate employees more effectively and take action or make informed choices as needed. As more and more work is being carried out on computers either in-office or remotely, the need for monitoring software to track these metrics is likely to become all the more relevant.