If you’re about to roll out mi.team — or any monitoring software — to your team, there’s a good chance you’re wrestling with how to actually tell people about it. Say too little and it feels like it was snuck in. Say the wrong thing and you’ve accidentally made your team anxious about software that was never meant to worry anyone.
Here’s the short version: the answer isn’t to say less. It’s to say the specific, honest thing — because the specifics are genuinely reassuring, and vagueness is what makes people fill in the worst-case gap themselves.
Why “Don’t Worry About It” Backfires
A common approach — understandably, since it’s the path of least resistance — is to roll monitoring software out as routine IT housekeeping: a pop-up appears, staff are told it’s expected behaviour, nothing to worry about, and questions get answered one at a time as they come up.
It works, in the sense that it gets the software installed without a confrontation. But it trades a difficult five-minute conversation now for a slower, harder problem later: the moment someone works out what the software actually does — whether from a colleague, a Google search, or just curiosity — the story becomes “they didn’t tell us,” not “they told us and it’s fine.” That’s a worse position to be in than the one you were trying to avoid, and it’s also why we’re cautious about listing every UK GDPR right your staff have in a page you’d link to during rollout — those rights only make sense to publish once you’re confident the rollout that came before it actually met that standard.
The Alternative: Say the Specific Thing
The reassuring version of this conversation isn’t softer language — it’s more specific language. Compare these two:
Vague: “You’ll see a pop-up about some new software. Don’t worry about it, it’s expected.”
Specific: “We’re installing mi.team on work computers. It doesn’t take screenshots, log your keystrokes, or read your messages — it looks at which applications and websites you use and for how long, to help us understand workload across the team. Anything that looks personal gets automatically hidden before anyone sees it.”
The second version says more, not less — and it lands better precisely because of that. It gives people the actual facts to reassure themselves with, rather than asking them to take reassurance on trust.
What to Actually Cover
A good rollout communication doesn’t need to be long, but it should cover:
- What it is — name it plainly as productivity and device monitoring software, don’t disguise it as something else
- What it does and doesn’t collect — the specifics reassure; vagueness doesn’t
- Why it’s being introduced — a real reason (workload visibility, supporting flexible working, spotting where processes are slow) lands better than no reason at all
- What happens to personal or private activity — that it’s automatically hidden, not manually reviewed and then discarded
- That they can correct it themselves — if they have login access, they can mark something extra as private, or unmark something the AI got wrong
- Who can see what — whether individual dashboards or peer visibility are switched on, and what that means in practice
- Who to ask — a real person, not just “IT” as an abstraction
Does This Have to Come From a Director?
No — and insisting it does is often what causes rollouts to stall. What actually matters, both for trust and for meeting UK GDPR’s transparency requirement, is that staff are told clearly and in good time, not specifically who in the organisation presses send. IT sending it is genuinely fine.
The one thing worth getting right: it should read as an organisational communication, not a technical notice IT decided to send off their own initiative. The easiest fix is one line making clear it’s sent with leadership’s backing — the template below builds that in, so IT can send it directly without needing a director’s time, while it still reads as coming from the business rather than just from the department installing the software.
A Template You Can Actually Use
Here’s a starting point you can adapt. It’s deliberately plain — resist the urge to soften it further.
Subject: New software on your work computer — what it is and what it isn’t
Hi team,
[Company name] is installing mi.team on work computers, and this note explains what it is before you see it land on your machine.
Over the next few days you’ll see mi.team installed on your work computer, along with a pop-up notice the first time you log in.
mi.team helps us understand how work is actually flowing across the team — where things are going well, where people are stretched, and where our tools or processes are getting in the way. It doesn’t take screenshots, log your keystrokes, or read the content of your emails or messages. It looks at which applications and websites are used and for how long, and categorises that into a general picture of productive time.
Anything the system identifies as personal or private — a banking site, a medical search, a personal message — is automatically hidden. It only runs on your work compute and never on personal devices. If you spot something that’s been flagged wrong — hidden when it shouldn’t be, or missed when it should have been — you’ll be able to fix that yourself.
[Pick the line that matches your rollout stage — don’t leave both in]
If individual logins are switched on: You’ll also have your own login, so you can see and manage your data.
If they’re not yet: We’re not switching on individual logins immediately, but it’s part of the plan — we’ll let you know when that changes and when you can login to review your data.
[Pick 1–2 that are true for your rollout — ideally don’t copy all five just because they’re there, and don’t include one that isn’t accurate]
We’re bringing this in because:
- …we want a clearer picture of where our processes and tools are slowing people down, so we can prioritise the right fixes rather than guess.
- …we want solid data to support the flexible and hybrid working arrangements, rather than relying on assumptions.
- …we want to make sure workload is distributed fairly across the team, based on real information rather than who happens to seem busiest.
- …we want the extra effort some of you regularly put in outside normal hours to actually be visible and recognised, not invisible.
- …it’s part of how we keep company devices secure and up to date, alongside everything above.
If you’ve got questions, please ask — [name], [role].
[Sender name], IT — on behalf of [Company name / leadership]
That last line is doing real work: it lets IT be the one who actually sends it — no waiting on a director’s diary — while making clear this isn’t IT going rogue with a new tool. It’s the organisation telling people, through IT.
One More Thing: Say It Before the Pop-Up, Not After
Whatever you send, send it before the software lands on people’s machines, not as a follow-up once someone’s already asked a question. Being told in advance and then seeing the pop-up as confirmation feels completely different to seeing the pop-up first and getting an explanation only because you asked for one.
