An Overview of Micromanagement
Micromanagement rises out of the fear of perfection. What we mean here is that when a manager believes that all their employees must perform at peak productivity levels all the time, they start overmonitoring their activities. Overall, this is known as micromanagement, which is a waste of time for both the employees and managers. For a better understanding, here are a few examples.
- Asking for updates every hour.
- Making employees add them in CC or BCC of every email they send
- Sitting right next to their employees and not moving an inch all the time.
- Giving detailed instructions to employees about what, when, and how to work.
- Not giving any authority or autonomy to employees.
- Taking even the smallest decisions for their employees.
- Employees have no say in any meetings.
Doing all this has a rare coincidental chance of getting work things done perfectly. However, it ensures the degradation of employee morale as employees don’t feel empowered. They feel that they are not a part of the organization and are just tools that have to work like robots and machines. Eventually, employees quit, which skyrockets your employee turnover rates. So, what’s the right way to track employee time and productivity? Let’s find out.
Read More: Top 10 Productivity Tools for Developers in 2026
6 Tips to Monitor Employee Productivity the Right Way
So, we have found out that although it's legal, micromanagement is unethical and morally wrong. Thus, we are scraping that idea of employee productivity monitoring off our list. So, what must we do to boost employee productivity without going too far? Here’s the right way.
1. Use the Best Productivity Monitoring Software & Techniques
Firstly, you will be sitting in your cabin, and your employees will be in their cubicles. This setting eliminates micromanagement. Thus, now we need to search for and implement the best productivity monitoring software in your organization. Since you will be focusing on business growth, let your tech and R&D teams do this part for you. Once you have configured the software for productivity monitoring, you are all set. The tool will ethically keep an eye on your employees and send you productivity data in real-time.
2. Use Data to Improve
Even after getting accurate productivity data of your employees, your managers might still use it to micromanage. The idea here is to encourage your managers to use the data to provide constructive criticism and feedback to employees.
3. Have Productivity Monitoring Boundaries
You need to ensure not to monitor employees for productivity:
- During lunch breaks
- During break
- After they clock out
- Before they clock in
4. Identify & Discontinue Micromanagers
To effectively monitor your employees for productivity, you also need to identify and terminate micromanagers from your organization on the spot. If you get any complaints, you should immediately start investigating with your screenshot monitoring software.
5. Transparency is the Key
Before you can start monitoring your employees for productivity, you must also have their written consent. Your employees must have a complete idea of what you are monitoring, for what purposes, how much, and when.
6. Review & Update
In case your employee productivity monitoring software is not doing its job of matching efficiency with expectations properly, then update it to get better results.
Conclusion
With that, we are done putting our post for this topic, How to Use Productivity Monitoring Without Micromanaging, under wraps. To summarize, conclude, and provide you with a final word, we would say that micromanagement is not the way to boost the productivity of your employees. Although managers use it to increase employee productivity, and the technique is applied with the intent to benefit employees by improving their efficiency, it backfires and instead degrades employee morale and boosts turnover rates. Instead, use DeskTrack’s employee monitoring software for the best results. Try now for your fieldwork, remote, hybrid, and desk employees.