5 Good Reasons Why You Should Monitor Internet In Your Business

Nowadays, internet monitoring has become an essential part of every organization. As we know that tracking online computer activities of employees can run the gamut from extreme to apathetic. 

Every organization wants to have complete control over the Internet usage of employees' computers. So they could learn whether employees are really doing their work and finishing their deadline tasks on time or not. 

On the other side, some companies may also think the monitoring internet usage of employees could cause a sense of mistrust in the organization. And due to that, such companies hesitate to monitor anything that their employees do online. 

However, as an employer, you should know that internet monitoring can help you in maintaining the security of your business. It doesn't mean that you'll have to adapt a totalitarian approach. But it needs to be active enough to defend the security of users against the murkier part of the web.

What you need is the best internet tracking software that would not only help you to track employees' internet usage but will also help you to protect the security of both employers and employees.

Here I have shown some reasons why you should monitor internet usage of employees.

• Remote Work Options-

Due to technological advancement, flexible work hours and remote work have become possible. It seems that remote work is beneficial to the companies as well as to the staffer. It reduces most of the infrastructural costs of the workplace, and employees will become happy to enjoy the perk of remote working options. However, there are also some risks. Since with remote work options, employers can be able to track employees' activities. Thus there are chances that employees may check some unproductive websites or use social media during work hours. To avoid such a scenario, employers should utilize the best internet tracking software like EmpMonitor. It contains all the essential remote monitoring features which let employers have their keen eyes of staffers web activities.

If you are a working parent, remote internet monitoring can help you to track the online computer activities of your kids. By using EmpMonitor- internet tracking software for parents, you can inspect the web activities and also restrict the websites which are not good for your kids.

• Protect Against Malware-

Malware doesn't just penetrate the network on its own. Usually, it only happens when the user tries to access or download anything compromised. Because of the negligence of some employees, there might be a chance that your business data would get hacked. And its consequences would not be good for your business. So, if you want to protect your business data against malware or other cyber threats, then you should employ the internet monitoring tool. It would help you to learn about any suspicious action of employees that could threaten the security of your business data.

• Compliance Audit-

Within the finance and healthcare industries, there is a certain rise in the data breach and insider fraud cases. And to ensure the data security of business data, companies do compliance audits to know whether their employees are following all rules and regulations under companies' policy. Indeed, internet monitoring can be a great help in this, as it can help the management to learn about any irregular online activities happening in the organization.

• Enhance Productivity-

Due to online technology, work has become easier for staffers. But it also leads to a few more distractions. Employers may often find that their staffers are using social media channels and other unproductive sites during working hours. In such a case, internet tracking becomes very essential, as it can help the employer to remotely monitor the internet activities of their employees. While you can use the best internet tracking software- EmpMonitor. It has firewall protection, using which you can block access to unproductive websites on employees' computers.

• Reduce Extra Cost-

One of the major causes of expenses to IT companies is because of the bandwidth bill. With slow internet connectivity, employees can't be able to do their work. Of course, there is also a possibility that consumers are using the bandwidth, which is not concerned with work production. In that case, employers can track the internet and block internet access to things that are not related to business. By doing so, companies can reduce their bandwidth cost.

Conclusion

So, here are the points which show the importance of internet monitoring. By using one of the best Employee Tracking Software- EmpMonitor, you can have control over the online computer activities of employees.

If you also want to share your own views about internet tracking, you are welcome to mention them in the comments given below.

Also watch: How To Check Presence Of Employee With Employee Monitoring Software - EmpMonitor

05 FEATURES EVERY EMPLOYEE TRACKING SOFTWARE SHOULD HAVE!

Employee tracking software is the need of the hour now, the reason being the ongoing Pandemic. Business giants like Microsoft, Google, TCS are now encouraging their employees to work from home even after the lockdown has been lifted in America. TCS has gone a step ahead and issued a statement saying that they will have 75% of all their employees work from home by 2025, and only 25% of employees will come to the office to work. It will reduce the traffic as well as office space, resulting in a better surrounding and healthy environment. 

To successfully implement this, employers such as you need to deploy a good monitoring software. One that will track all the activities of employees, both remote and premise; choosing such software is not an easy task one has to take several things into account before finalizing. In this article, we have covered five key features that you should take into consideration before buying an employee monitoring software. 

1. Consider Your Needs

The first thing you need to consider is your need. Why do you need to deploy a monitoring software and in which departments? You want to monitor both remote and premise employees with the same software, or you want to use a separate tool for both. Also, if you want to allow communicating in your organization or not; if yes, then you have to look for a software that has inbuilt chat features. 

If your work requires employees to go out and do the fieldwork, then you need to use a tool that has a geo-tracking feature, and if your organization only has a desk job, then you need to buy a tool that has screenshot and internet tracking features. 

At this point, you might think that this is a very tedious job to select one software from this vast pool; allow us to ease the pressure. We have an all in one employeetracking software for your organization - EmpMonitor. This tool has great features that cover 90% of your employee monitoring needs. 

This tool has amazing features like productivity tracking, screenshot, top apps & websites usage, user logs, and many more. Using it, you can easily monitor all the activities of your employees, both remote and premise. Click the button below to know more about this software. 

2. Integration

The software you choose must have a third-party application integration feature; that is, it should allow third-party applications to be paired with itself to enhance its working capabilities. It is crucial because, if you want to expand your work to new horizons, and need your tool to do it perfectly, you wouldn’t have to implement a whole new software. You can easily buy the add-on you need and integrate it with your tool. 

Thus, you should always go for the software that has great integration features with high-security options as security is also important when you are dealing with such third-party add-ons.

3. Good Analytics Feature

Monitoring employees’ activities is the only reason you implement such software in your organization, so the tool you choose must have a good analytics feature. It must be able to track every single activity done by your employees on their systems effectively and should provide a detailed report on it at the end of the day. It should also be able to track both productive and non-productive time while being stealth to the user. 

EmpMonitor can perform this task very well with the help of its stealth mode feature. It closely tracks everything while completely being hidden in the background, and it doesn’t even show in the task manager.

4. Effective Time Management

Time management is also important if you want to boost the productivity of your employees, as it helps your employees to manage their time spent on each project or task. Thus it is essential that the tool you choose must have good time management functionality. Features that can help both employers and employees to manage their working time. 

5. User-friendly Design

A friendly interface is very important as it is the only thing you’ll interact with while managing your employees. Thus it is important that the software you choose has a clean and bug-free interface. If your tool has a buggy interface, it’ll be hard for you to manage the productivity of your employees as it will contradict with your work.

Also you can watch the video about EmpMonitor- Best Employee Monitoring Software| Employee productivity Monitoring Software right below:

Conclusion

There you have it, five features that you must consider before buying the best employee tracking software for your industry. Remember to list out the key factors why you need such software before buying one for your organization. 

Steps to Streamline Workforce Through Remote Worker Monitoring

Since businesses are becoming global, the workflow of remote employees has become as important as in-house employee processes. Both hiring and retaining employees bring a lot of challenges, and especially the problems occur when there is a disconnect between the employers and employees.

With an increasing number of companies moving to freelancers and remote staff, it is essential that businesses should adopt remote worker monitoring to keep the employees responsible and highly efficient. 

Here are some steps following which you can manage your workforce through remote monitoring.

1. Have clear expectations

Set Expectations

An efficient remote team always relies on clear objectives. The quality and performance brought out by the telecommuters is clearly a representation of your management skills.

Certainly, remote employment is far less formal than conventional workplace activities. Yet if you have reasonable goals for the remote team, they would have the requisite framework to deliver results.

Therefore set clear expectations for your remote team and track their activities through monitoring software from time to time. Make sure that your employees should know clearly what is anticipated from them so that you know exactly what all things you need to keep an eye on.

2. Make use of technology 

Use Technology

The wrong way to deal with a remote workplace is to reach around and micro-manage them. That will only irritate your staff and increase turnover. Instead, an employee monitoring system will help to produce good outcomes, while offering metrics that suggest compliance with employees. Technology helps you to operate from distance, offering workers the flexibility and motivation they need to get their job done well.

Employees who feel self-confident and motivated are most likely to excel. And intuitive tools for project management, networking, and teamwork will bring people together wherever the place.

3. Motivate with automation

Automation Technology

Streamlining the workflow of remote employees may begin with an automated system that reduces tedious and time-consuming tasks. Employees appreciate this. So, search for technology that blends seamlessly with the job styles of workers. 

Make use of best remote worker monitoring software to get insights about what online resources your employees use. That way, you will be able to understand their technological needs. 

Many approaches to streamline workflow for workers involve interactive meeting applications that allow anyone to meet from different locations for face-time. Virtual communication choices are various, such as Zoom and WebEx. A regular stand-up meeting to discuss goals, chat about challenges, and exchange thoughts are one of the easiest ways to build a positive atmosphere for remote workers. 

4. Maintain engagement

Engagement Technology

While dealing with remote workers, it can be hard to assess if they are fully involved in their activities all day long. Unlike brick-and-mortar staff, whose productivity can be measured visually, remote workers may participate in certain behaviors that are not helpful to the company. And monitoring software is the best way to track employee's behavior using business computers, such as laptops and tablets.

You can check whether employees are logging in during work hours. Some remote monitoring tools have built-in work timers and can monitor employee workspace tasks.

Again, be mindful of having resources for workers, so they don't feel micromanaged. So the safest course of action for streamlining remote workplace procedures and workflows is to develop formal policies. 

Create a collection policy for adhering remote employees. Keep in close communication with all staff using a range of tools, such as e-mails, instant messaging, and phone calls. Treat remote employees as important and highly efficient members of the team that they are.

5. Be Transparent

Remote Worker Monitoring

Transparency is a powerful tool when it comes to streamlining the workflow of your remote team. It not only allows you to advise your staff authentically but also increases the efficiency and pace of decision-making.

When it comes to the whole staff, whether in office or virtual, being as open as possible makes it easy for them to function autonomously. So, regularly monitor your employees' activities and find out where they are facing issues while performing their tasks using a productivity tracking software.

Sometimes workers hold themselves back to ask for help. But with the help of screenshots generated through remote worker monitoring software, you can get to know where they got stuck and maybe help them. 

In fact, apart from communicating and helping that particular employee who was facing the issue, you can discuss it with the whole team. So that whenever such an issue appears in the future they can solve it without any support.

Conclusion

No doubt, technology has become an essential part of every business. Especially for the companies that have remote employees or teams that operate out of the workplace. Though managing a remote team is not an easy task. But, these steps will surely help you to streamline your remote workforce effortlessly.

Want To Know About The Best Employee Monitoring Software? See This Video:-

How Work From Home Productivity Monitoring Is Beneficial?

Every employee plays a major role in contributing to the growth of the company and its overall productivity. But with the increasing technology and easy access to a lot of things like the Internet, companies do face a lot of challenges while dealing with the productivity of employees.

So companies need to take a constructive approach to boost productivity as it can not improve on its own. And tracking of workers is a standard approach that companies should adopt to increase their productivity.

There are a lot of ways in which companies can benefit from work from home productivity monitoring using employee tracking software. So, let's not waste any time and check what they are.

Helps to Identify the Peak Productive Hours

 

Now that the business world is inclining more towards service-based industries, more and more workers are taking online jobs and work remotely. Employee tracking tools support this recent development of digital and remote workers. 

Through monitoring idle vs. active time, administrators can see the overall productivity rates of the enterprise from a wider perspective. The data collected later helps you to know when employees are most engaged and performing tasks. You can also this knowledge to improve productivity by motivating your employees to work in their working hours

Real-time Monitoring

It's important to have real-time employee tracking software to know the insight of employees' activities while running a large team or remote workers. At the end of the day, you don't pay them for killing time or browsing the net.

With good software, you can easily evaluate everyone’s behavior, including those employees who work in the office. It will also give them the impression that their work is routinely monitored and will enforce discipline. This would result in greater productivity and better performance.

Increased Productivity

Work from home productivity monitoring helps to understand how your employees are functioning. Employees can monitor their job to see how much time they spend on the tasks. 

It is a great way to check and understand how much time they spend each day on tasks that they are supposed to do. Also, the reports generated will help to remove unproductive behaviors and make more things happen.

Less Paperwork

Since the innovation of computers, the paperwork has almost over. But still, in workplaces, there is a need for it to make reports, timesheets, etc. Monitoring software goes back to the basics and generates reports regarding the working hours of employees.

Another form of paperwork which is very time consuming and mundane to log timesheets. Maintaining the weekly timetable is one small, repetitive activity that can be automated and tracked through employee tracking software. This will free both the boss and the employee's time.

While thinking about work from home productivity monitoring, efficiency may not be considered as the first thing that can be exploited. But if we dig deeper into this, then we can see that it can be an effective tool in improving productivity for employees.

Cyberslacking and other divergences

Because of multiple obstacles, some workers have poor performance levels. Sometimes, they lose attention due to certain distractions. The real-time monitoring helps to recognize and inform those workers to remain focused on their tasks.

When you use employee monitoring software correctly and efficiently, it is easy to find out about the workers' Internet use, idle time, excessive loss of time, etc. In this way, you can keep them focused and free from distractions.

Performance Review

Monitoring helps to enhance the output as well as to increase employee productivity. Employers can review the day-to-day working hours and take the appropriate steps to boost productivity by motivating employees to participate in business work.

In fact, in every organization where the workers invest much of their time in unnecessary activities, employee desktop monitoring is important – even the feeling that the senior authority is watching them will help to improve productivity.

Hang on!

If you want to know more on how you can Manage Remote Work Easily With Powerful Monitoring Software: EmpMonitor, then you must watch the video given below.

Final Thoughts

If done correctly, the work from home productivity monitoring of the employees can bring many benefits to any company and its employees. The main thing in the organizational system is to speak to all people and educate them about the privacy rule. All should know what to do and what their rights are.

Also, don't forget to pick the right employee tracking software for your business. The best thing is that most of the time tracking tools allow easy and convenient monitoring of employees. Thus, it can be used for profit by both employers as well as employees.

05 Challenges and Solutions Behind Remote Monitoring this Quarantine

05 Challenges and Solutions Behind Remote Monitoring this Quarantine 

COVID-19 has posed a substantial threat to humankind, spreading like wildfire among all the nations of the world. Various organizations and corporations worry about their employees' safety and have resorted to commencing work from home for their co-workers. 

Telecommuting got a mixed reaction from both- the employers and the employees. One of the biggest reasons behind it is that a lot of employees were never used to the 9 to 5 work schedule at home. Managing a remote workforce is not an easy task, and one needs to deploy special tools to know what their employees are up to at their places. 

Monitoring employees remotely comes with various challenges and risks. And as we all know, you must know the rules before you break them. So here we are, with a list of some of the main challenges of remote monitoring and the solutions to them: 

1. Lack of Communication 

When working at home, it becomes extremely stressful to keep constant communication with your colleagues, mostly because they do not stay in front of your eyes all the time. Though it is possible to host regular discussions via texts and video calls, the lack of face-to-face communication still creates a work barrier. 

Solution- Use a single messaging platform and install it on every employee's system. Make it mandatory for all to share their regular work updates. Encourage them to come up with doubts or queries, hold daily video/phone calling sessions, talk to them about upcoming tasks, etc. You can use various tools and apps like Telegram, Zoom, etc. 

2. Discipline Issues 

Employers already struggle to maintain discipline in the office premises; it becomes more painful to do so among the remote workforce. How do you know if your co-workers are serious with the assigned task when working directly from their bedrooms? Apart from general monotony, WFH also comes with some grave distractions. 

Solution- Employers can use tools to track and monitor their employees' regular activities and take strict actions against the ones who do not follow the rules. This way, the employees being aware of the surveillance, will keep up with the work pace and take their office work seriously. 

3. Data Breaching 

One of the biggest reasons why employers fear letting their employees working from home is that they fear the potential threats to the company data. The chances of data leaking and breaching increase exponentially when people work on public WiFis using their BYODs, and have little to no knowledge of the malware that they may have got from any random website. 

Solution- Create separate office profiles for each employee, starting from Google account to Thunderbird, Dropbox, Skype, and every other app/tool used for handling official data. Keep a Record of these profiles and their passwords, monitor them regularly, and check for any suspicious activities. Take strict actions against the employees who do not abide by your company's rules. 

4. Increasing Goldbricking 

Goldbricking is the phenomenon of pretending to work for longer hours and getting paid for doing far less than the total work assigned. It is no brainer that it becomes strikingly prevalent in distant workforces. Workers aren't usually worried about the deadlines as there remains no one around to hurry them up, leading to a decline in overall productivity. 

Solution- As already mentioned above, using monitoring tools and software will let you track each and every activity of your co-workers. This way, you can record the actual working and non-working hours along with a list of all the frequently used apps and visited websites. You can assess the employees based on this information and discuss their work with them accordingly. 

5. Reliable Tool 

There are various best remote monitoring tools and software available in the market, but all of them differ in features and functions. You cannot rely on any random tool, as most of them are not really safe. As a matter of fact, the best tools are pretty expensive. 

Solution- Look for the reviews of all the tools and book a demo for the ones who offer a free trial. There are various options in the market, like EmpMonitor, ActivTrak, Time Doctor, etc. that offer the best features at equitably competitive prices. Be sure you choose any tool according to your company's size and the features that you need for monitoring. 

Well, if you want to dive more about tool, you can have a look at this video on: Manage Remote Work Easily With Powerful Monitoring Software: EmpMonitor(EmpMonitor AV Ad)

Conclusion 

Managing your remote employees is, indeed, a tedious task, but you can do it without any hassle by keeping a constant eye on them. There are various software and tools available in the market that let you do so in real-time. Assess the best one that could work for your business and deploy it for a better outcome.