Recent studies have found that 7 in 10 large companies in the U.S. will be monitoring their employees in the next two years.
Careers and resume advice site StandOut CV reviewed which states are most likely to monitor employees according to Google data and determined just exactly what an employer is able to collate and monitor when using these tools. According to Google search data, this increase in companies engaging with employee tracking is well underway, with searches for “employee tracking software” up 122% nationally from 720 monthly searches in June 2022 to 1,600 monthly searches in May 2022.
Arizona led the way with the most annual searches per 1,000 employers in the state (589), with Texas in second (472) and Alaska in third (471). A total of 67 relevant search terms were considered in the research, including Google searches like “best employee monitoring tools” and “employee monitoring software” as well as 50 popular monitoring tool names like “ActivTrak” and “ClickTime.”
Time tracking was the most popular feature, with 96% of tools offering this, followed by real-time activity monitoring (86%), attendance tracking (86%), and website/app usage (84%). Time tracking allows an employer to see how long an employee spends working on tasks; real-time activity monitoring provides a breakdown of what an employee has been working on and the exact files the employee accessed; attendance tracking shows when an employee is actively working on his or her device and when the time is spent as idle; and website/app usage shows which sites and apps were used and visited during the day, as well as the amount of time spent on each.
“To see that interest in monitoring employees in the U.S. is on the rise so sharply should be concerning for many employees who may not understand how these tools truly work,” observes Andrew Fennel, director at StandOut CV, who notes, “Monitoring can be good for business efficiency, however, recording video and audio will be considered a step too far by many employees who may look for a job elsewhere.”
Methodology
To determine the states who are most interested in monitoring their employees, StandOut CV analyzed all 50 states ranking them based on the number of times people in each state Googled terms related to monitoring and/or tracking employees over the past 12 months using Google’s Keyword Planner. A total of 67 relevant search terms were used in the research, including ‘best employee monitoring tools’ and ’employee monitoring software’ as well as popular monitoring tool names like ‘activtrak’ or ‘clicktime’. The monitoring tool, ‘harvest’ was ignored due to the keyword having multiple meanings. The sum of the number of searches was then compared to each state’s employer population to calculate the number of searches per 1,000 employers.
The number of businesses per state was taken from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The monitoring software and tools were selected on the basis of their popularity and frequency of features in various comparison and review sites including G2’s roundup of the Best Employee Monitoring Software in 2023.
When deciding which invasive features to review, StandOut CV took into account those most commonly reported on product reviews, as well as those featured within the descriptions and terms of each particular tool.
“Invasive scores” are based on an index point system with a weighted points system assigned for the instances of data gathering; percentage scores for the monitors are out of a total score of 20. Audio monitoring, video monitoring, chat monitoring, screen tracking and screenshots, keystroke recording, and GPS tracking were given double weighting as being considered more invasive than the other features.
The original study was run in 2021 and updated in 2023. Percentage comparisons relate to StandOut CV’s own bespoke dataset year-on-year.
Did You Know: Video monitoring is now 42.42% more common on employee monitoring tools than it was in 2021 (38% in 2023 vs 21.88% in 2021). Seventy-eight percent of these “productivity” tools take screenshots of an employee’s screen, based on employer-set conditions.
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