With the commencement of work from the home trend, the remote working culture is on-trend. It made our lives easier by letting us work from our comfortable spaces, but it also created a loophole regarding employee surveillance. Many of them did not maintain their productivity level and the regular working hours, which is unfair for the employers to reach their productivity goals and satisfy their clients accordingly.
If you are handling all your remote working employees using the web, their overall internet usage information can be quite concerning.
Are the employees working sincerely and being productive, or are they sitting on their couch watching the cat/dog videos during their work hours? Or are they unknowingly visiting unwanted sites, which leads to security threats and pulls down the overall productivity?
Therefore, monitoring internet activities of an employee is quintessential nowadays whether they are working from their homes or the respective offices.
Why Should The Employees Be Monitored?
According to the latest survey, most of the employees waste their office hours doing something unproductive. They fetch all the bandwidth that slows down the overall official work. It can increase the operating costs.
Hence, it is crucial to fix this issue at the earliest.
In this article, we will discuss the four techniques to monitor the internet usage of the workforce.
#1) Blocking and restricting all the unwanted sites:
This method is one of the most followed techniques by many organizations. It involves restricting all the websites and apps that can distract the employees while working. For example, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, etc. But what about the digital marketing team that needs the social media platforms for affiliate promotions? Then it is advised, manual checking of the unwanted websites to ban them.
#2) Monitoring web usage in stealth mode:
Many companies use workforce management software that measures productivity, and the employees aren't aware of it. But this can lead to some issues for the workforce such as-
Legal Issues- Many countries do not approve of the method of monitoring internet activities secretly. It is necessary to inform the employees and have their consent for installing surveillance software on their computers.
Trust Issues- This method can also lead to trust issues between team members and team leaders. They might think that the leaders do not trust their subordinates enough.
Performance Pressure- An employee can feel under pressure to perform his best even when he does not feel productive and can lead him towards exhaustion.
Practically, employee internet monitoring should involve mutual trust and work ethics, reason why companies opt for deploying surveillance software to track work performance and productivity.
If you are looking for the best monitoring software, here are the top 5 options to choose from:
EmpMonitor
Hubstaff
Tera Mind
Time Doctor
ActivTrak
The features of these software/tools:
It helps you to track all the employees and their work at once
Tracks the keystrokes regularly
Captures screenshots at regular intervals
Provides all the details about the internet usage, browsing history, download history, e-mails, texts, social networking, etc
Tracks the most used websites and apps
Maintains employee timesheet
Tracks geo-location of the workforce
Provides firewall
Quick and easy integration with office devices and much more!
#3) Observe the overall network traffic:
Study the employees' internet browsing behavior and how it impacts the office network. Use the firewall feature for monitoring internet activities to get all the details, shared among the team members through the web.
#4) Detach connectivity of wireless router:
The office Wi-Fi, connected to other wireless routers can help with tracking the browsing history of employees.
All you need to do is-
Set up authentication by keying in your wireless router's IP address
After that, the wireless router will scan through all the employees' web activities once the 'Logs' button is clicked.
You can also use the wireless router to block all the unwanted sites.
The Top Three Benefits Of Monitoring The Employees-
Increased productivity- Surveillance eventually increases the productivity levels when the employees are aware of the monitoring system. So they are less likely to visit unsafe sites that can cause internal harm to the company's security and data.
Trust and Accountability- It builds a strong sense of trust between the employer and employees. The team leaders are aware of what their fellow teammates are doing during their work and where they spend most of their time.
Fewer Security Risks- The ultimate objective of using monitoring tools is to eliminate online and offline threats like Malicious risks and Insider threats. The employees are less likely to get engaged in any illegal activities while they are under surveillance. Even if anyone breaches the company policies, the software will immediately report it to the employer.
Wrapping It Up:
Monitoring internet activities of your employees does not have to be hectic. Instead of manually banning/restricting all the unwanted sites, an employer should opt for software that eliminates all kinds of distractions at work and provides efficiency regarding surveillance. The before-mentioned top 4 software can be beneficial in saving time and money in the long run. It has everything that a firm needs to boost up its total productivity.
