Read time: 6 minutes
Monitoring employee computers involves the use of software and hardware tools to perform workplace surveillance to gather information such as employee working patterns, availability at the workstation, idle time, unnecessary activities, and more to boost productivity and protect the organization’s resources. The main aim of monitoring is to prevent any unacceptable and unlawful behavior that can cause the organization some serious trouble later. In this article, we will be exploring the core issues associated with employee pc monitoring. Moreover, the benefits of the employee computer monitoring software and tools will also be discussed in detail.
More about employee desktop monitoring
It is not just about workplace surveillance; there is more to it. Employee activity monitoring can be highly beneficial for a small, mid, or large-sized organization, as it can offer insights into their activities, ensuring that they are following and engaging in best practices that are essential for sustained growth of the organization. Monitoring employee computers allows real-time tracking and provides total visibility. This discourages and minimizes any malpractices and foul play that can haunt the organization later.
Why is monitoring employee computers necessary?
According to a recent research by International Data Corp (IDC), nearly 30-40 percent of the employees’ internet time is not work-related. Another study revealed that 21-31 percent of employees actively indulge in unethical activities, which include the transfer of sensitive information, such as intellectual property and trade secrets to outsiders, therefore jeopardizing many crucial assets and projects. It is estimated that in the US, goldbricking accounts for a loss of nearly 40 percent annually in productivity.
Therefore, many organizations rely on tools to observe the working of their employees. As for the employer, there are multiple benefits of using employee computer monitoring software, like:
- Enhances Employees’ Productivity: During work from home, most employees don’t provide their 100% productivity, which results in the wastage of the company’s time and money. In such cases, monitoring employee computers allows you to figure out what they are up to during their working hours. On the basis of the data generated by the monitoring software, the employer can figure out ways to get more done by the employee. In this way, employee monitoring helps to improve productivity of the employees and the organization.
- Improves the Relationship Between Employer & Employees: When you communicate with employees on a daily basis, it not only improves the overall productivity but also helps in improving your relationships with the employees. Monitoring your employees allows you to notice the mistakes of your employees, which can be used as an opportunity to understand them and provide them assistance in not repeating those mistakes. It is one of the best monitoring employee computer use in the workplace.
- Prohibit Employees from Violating Company’s Policies: There will always be some employees who could violate the policies of your enterprise. Monitoring your employees gives you the power to learn what employees are doing behind your back. So, if any employee tries to break the company’s policies, you will be able to catch him red-handed.
Some other benefits of using an employee computer monitoring software are:
- It protects trade secrets and intellectual property from theft.
- It helps to limit fraudulent activities in time.
- Saving and archiving monitoring videos can save the company in the event of legal lawsuits.
- Monitoring helps to avoid productivity loss.
- Better resource management as manual supervision is not required.
- Helps in spotting mistakes and threats early to find appropriate remedies in time.
How to monitor employees in real-time?
Before exploring the monitoring tools, we should also look into the legal and ethical side of it. It is considered legal for the employer to monitor corporate-owned computers, smartphones, and other company-owned devices during business hours. There are situations where monitoring becomes obscure, such as usage of corporate-owned devices outside of work hours or usage of employee-owned devices during office hours. However, the company must clarify the terms of the monitoring policy with their employees before deploying the monitoring tool.
Now, come back to the discussion on how you can monitor your employees in real-time. The answer is simple. Use an employee computer monitoring software. Choose a tool that you can use across multiple departments to view activities of multiple employees simultaneously.
One such excellent monitoring tool is Employee Desktop Live Viewer by Kernel. It is a multi-system employee monitoring tool to record employees working from home or office.
Benefits of the employee computer monitoring software:
- It gives the authority to the administrator to remotely shut down, restart, or turn off a computer. A warning message can also be sent directly to the employee in case of misconduct.
- Easily assign viewing rights to multiple users.
- Option for the pop-up message for alerting.
- It provides numerous ways to add systems for monitoring.
- Customizable settings and options, including picture quality.
- Invisible monitoring.
- Automated and offline monitoring.
- Dual-screen monitoring.
Conclusion
When your organization has 100+ employees working from home, hybrid, or on-site, it’s hard to observe what they are doing all the time during office hours. Monitoring employee computers helps employers to track whether employees are working or not. Here, we have looked at three crucial aspects of monitoring. Employee monitoring tools are great at improving employee productivity and reducing the misuse of corporate resources by implementing Acceptable Use Policies (AUP).
The market is full of PC monitoring tools; some are legit while some only steal your data. Therefore, choose a reliable and trustworthy monitoring tool like Kernel Employee Desktop Live Viewer. The tool offers a free trial period of 15 days so the employer can test the tool’s monitoring capability without paying anything.
Frequently Asked Questions
Answer. Yes. In most countries, the organization has complete rights to monitor their employees who work on company-owned devices. Moreover, some organizations even ask employees to install monitoring applications on their personal devices if that device is directly or indirectly used in business operations.
Answer. Some do, but not all. It depends on the tool. Enterprise-grade tools allow 24/7 monitoring capability, with or without internet. They monitor keystrokes and constantly generate logs to track every activity of the employee.
Answer. Yes, but only when you are using a trustworthy tool that guarantees data privacy and has integrated strict data governance policies. Therefore, businesses always check monitoring tools before they deploy them across the organization. Any carelessness with such tools can lead to massive data loss.
