Have you ever wondered if your employees are being as productive as they could be? According to IT research firm Gartner, non-work-related Internet surfing results in an estimated 40 percent productivity loss each year for American businesses.
That’s not hard to believe. Between real-time news feeds, instant messaging, social networks, online gaming and video websites like Hulu and Netflix; it’s amazing that your staff accomplishes anything at all.
Loss of productivity is only one part of the problem. Unrestricted Internet access allows employees to download illegal or copyrighted content from peer-to-peer networks, abuse the company email system or simply waste valuable time surfing inappropriate websites.
The legal ramifications of these actions can be quite damaging to any business, particularly in the case of an employee found viewing pornography. In the U.S., more than 15,000 sexual harassment cases are filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission each year due to illicit material found in the workplace.
Perhaps more disturbing, statistics say that 70-80 percent of all computer crimes — many of which involve financial fraud or intellectual property theft — are committed by employees against their own employers..
How can you protect your small business from these potential pitfalls? An employee-monitoring technology lets you take charge of how your employees use the Internet. You can eliminate excessive, non-business Internet activity, which simultaneously increases productivity and virtually eliminates the legal liability. Additionally, observing your employees ongoing performance will provide you with valuable information about how to improve their effectiveness on the job.
There are a wide variety of employee-monitoring options available to you; each varies in cost and complexity. You can monitor all employees or just keep an eye on new or potentially problematic employees. The specific tasks you can monitor will vary depending on the program you choose. However, most employee-monitoring packages are capable of performing these functions:
Internet Monitoring and Filtering
With Internet monitoring you can ascertain which employees spend the most time browsing the Internet, identify websites they visit and evaluate how much time they spend on each site. Therefore, if Susan in accounting is spending her time attending to her virtual farm on Facebook as opposed to processing invoices, you’ll know it. Internet filtering will remedy the problem, because you can now control your employee’s access to the Internet and specify what sites she can visit and at what time of day.
File and Document Logging
File and document logging helps to prevent data lost by maintaining a record of all the files accessed on an employee’s computer. This record can display which documents have been viewed and show when or where a file was transferred or printed. Many of these programs can even block files from being transferred to removable media, such as DVD and USB Flash drives. Some can even send you an alert when a removable device has been connected to an employee’s PC.
EMail and Instant Messaging Logging
Make sure that confidential company secrets aren’t being shared with unauthorized personal by recording all of the email an employee sends or receives. This can also be configured to record only emails containing specific keywords. This record can also be used to capture instant messages from applications like AIM, MIRC and Yahoo Messenger.
Application Monitoring and Filtering
Application monitoring lets you discover which applications your employees use and how much time they spend on them. This helps to ensure that Joe in marketing is working on his presentation and not updating his iTunes playlist. If it turns out that Joe is spending too much time on iTunes, application filtering lets you prevent it from even running on his system. Taken a step further, you can prevent all applications; except for those Joe needs to perform his job, from launching.
Screenshot and Keystroke Logging
This feature can typically be configured to capture every keystroke entered on the employee’s computer or it can be configured to start logging only when specific keywords are detected. Most monitoring programs also give you the option of taking screenshots of the employee’s PC; either at set intervals or whenever the key logger is activated, thus providing you with a visual record of what transpired.
Centralized Real-time Monitoring, Deployment and Administration
You need to install and administer many of these packages from the PC being monitored. For small environments with only a handful of PCs, this is an acceptable solution. However, for larger networks, with 10 or more systems, there are advanced computer monitoring solutions you can deploy and manage from a single PC. They cost more, but are far more convenient.
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