Friday, October 15, 2010

Keep Tabs On Your Employee Activities With A Desktop Monitoring Service

Countless studies have revealed that a majority of employees who have access to the internet during their workday spend a lot of time conducting non-work related web browsing at the expense of their employer. The result is hours upon hours of lost production and potential profits. But there is a way to effectively increase production and it comes in the form of a desktop remote monitoring service.

You may have tried various tools and tactics to keep your employees on track, only to find that you were wasting your money. Cutting internet access is probably not an option. Using internet filtering services may block websites that your employees need to access to do their jobs. Restricting access to the internet is too costly and time consuming.

Your next choice may be a desktop remote monitoring service. With this type of service, professionals are able to monitor how much time your employees are devoting to being productive and how much time they are spending doing non-work related activities on the internet. Additionally, these services also monitor when your employees access websites that can be harmful to your network or if they are potentially leaking confidential data.

There are many different types of remote monitoring tools on the market. You will have to take some time to figure out how much you will spend on the software, what you need to monitor, and the method of monitoring. Additionally, monitoring requires computer specialists and quite a bit of time, you may also need to consider hiring employers or outsourcing to online monitoring services.

Remote monitoring software prices have dropped considerable over the years as technology has become more affordable. Some basic software can be found online for free, while other advanced programs can be quite expensive. Outsourcing to an online service gives you freedom from worrying about purchasing the programs, software licenses, or upgrades.

You will also have to consider how in depth you want the monitoring to be. Basic monitoring programs keep lists of what websites your employees viewed without much additional data. More advanced programs can capture detailed information about their internet activities, such as how much time was spent on each website or what was downloaded or uploaded to and from the website. Other programs even log employee keystrokes, capture emails, and can even record voice.

They will also have to determine what kind of techniques they want to use to monitor the data. Online services offer the ability to have data monitored from remote locations. The benefit of this is that more people from a monitoring company can filter through much more data for a lower cost than on-site monitoring office. On the other hand, this may expose the confidential data of your company to the outside world. In house defeat this negative aspect, but are much more expensive.

Regardless of what type of service an employer ultimately chooses, they have the legal responsibility to inform their employees that their activities are being monitored. In many places, not making your employees aware of this constitutes illegal search and seizure and employers can be sued, fined, and even imprisoned. Having employees sign a legal document stating that they consent to monitoring is a simple way of informing them of monitoring without violating their rights.

A great way to increase productivity and profitability in a workplace that has internet access is through desktop monitoring services. They give business owners the ability to monitor internet usage without truly restricting access. And for some businesses, the increase in profits may even outweigh the costs of these services.

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