As of now, in every organization there are computers and Internets. And if your employee is using internet for his personal use and you may not want your employees using company equipment for their own use but could be in a situation where you haven’t found a way to effectively manage this policy.
If you have a policy that allows staff to only surf personally during lunchtimes and/or breaks, you might want to ensure that this is all they are doing and that work periods remain productive. Or, if you have employees that submit overtime hours for pay, you might want to be sure that during that overtime, there is absolutely no personal surfing happening. You also may need to determine what is happening on your network in order to protect company proprietary information and protect against security threats.
Instilling a company wide policy on Internet usage is very important for legal reasons but it can be hard to police if you need to leave the Internet open to searches for company reasons. Some companies have all non-company related programs blocked. Others cannot do this because their employees may need to access some programs or websites due to the nature of the business.
One way to determine exactly what your employees are doing is to install computer surveillance software. There are several options for this. Programs can provide you with all the details you need to keep your company at peak proficiency. If there are employees doing things that they shouldn’t with company resources or during company time, this will tell you. You can find out what websites are visited, how long your employees spend their and what information is sent and received on their computers. You can determine if they’re using time and resources paid by you to chat, play video games or send out information that’s proprietary.
You can run this software discreetly in the background. This information can also be used to determine when to reward very productive employees as well. You can easily do this yourself without technical knowledge and can remove it at will quite easily. Whether you’re suspicious of behavior or just want to find a way to proactively manage what’s happening, this can be an excellent way for you to have a bird’s eye view of your staff’s behavior without the appearance of micro managing them.
