All about Employee Monitoring

Years ago a typewriter sat on every office worker’s desk. Now a PC does. And since the PC is an open portal to the World Wide Web, workers’ use—and misuse—of company PCs is now a concern of every employer.

80% of employees ignore their official duties each day to check personal email, play online games, log on to social networks or chat via ICQ, Skype or any number of other popular, easy-to-use messengers. Workers can easily waste an hour or more of their “company” time on these unproductive diversions every day. But employers have ways to combat the waste. One of their most useful tools is employee monitoring software, sometimes known as keylogger software.

Employee monitoring software monitors and records the computer activity of each employee on monitored machines and makes the logs available in reports viewable by management. The programs are available for both Windows and Mac operating systems, and most can be configured to run without being noticed by computer users.

Although most monitoring programs can run hidden from users, that isn’t usually necessary or even advisable. In fact, most employers inform workers that monitoring is taking place and provide them with written contracts describing acceptable and unacceptable uses of the employers’ systems. In virtually all legal jurisdictions, employee monitoring is allowed by law when employees are fully informed of their company’s policies. Check the laws in your locality before implementing employee monitoring.

Employers benefit from monitoring in three important ways:

• Monitoring improves productivity and discipline.
• Monitoring can provide information, such as the times required for performing tasks or the distribution of work load among workers, that is useful in managing operations or keeping performance statistics.
• Monitoring can help reduce risky behaviors that could release confidential information inappropriately or expose company systems to malware.

Employee monitoring software is offered by many vendors and can have any of a variety of features. Here are some of the more common things keyloggers will do:

• log keystrokes, including passwords and text in applications like ICQ, Skype, Yahoo, email clients, web browsers and other programs
• record web browsing history in all popular browsers
• make screen captures of monitor content or active windows at configurable times and resolutions
• monitor applications run, including applications unrelated to job duties, like games
• install on all Windows systems, from XP to Windows 8.1, with some programs available for Mac OS X
• provide of the option to hide monitoring from users.

Virtually all employee monitors log keyboard keystrokes. This keylogging captures all key presses and saves them to a log file for later viewing along with the date, time and application associated with each record.

Perhaps the most useful feature of employee monitoring software is the keeping of a web browsing history for each employee. Personal web browsing by workers creates the greatest drain on a staff’s efficiency. Employees are drawn to social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter, retail sites like Amazon or any of a myriad of sites hosting online games.  Time spent chatting with friends, “window shopping” for merchandise or playing online games directly impacts workers’ productivity. With access to web browsing logs, however, managers can detect and assess the problem and then take appropriate corrective action with offending employees. Employers may even decide to block employees’ access to certain types of websites based on information provided by monitor.