Keep Tabs On Your Employees With A Desktop Remote Monitoring Service

When left unsupervised, many employees who have desktop access to the internet spend hours each day surfing the web. They waste countless hours that could be devoted to working do everything but work. Because of this, your business may be loosing considerable amounts of profits due to lost productivity. But there is an effective way to get that productivity back up, and that is through a desktop remote monitoring service.

You may have tried various tools and tactics to keep your employees on track, only to find that you were wasting your money. Cutting internet access is probably not an option. Using internet filtering services may block websites that your employees need to access to do their jobs. Restricting access to the internet is too costly and time consuming.

With a desktop remote monitoring service, you can have specialists monitor the productivity of your employees without restricting their internet accesses. You can ensure that their internet activities are work-related and not just for pleasure. Furthermore, employers can use these services to verify that employees are not accessing websites that can be harmful to their networks or make sure that confidential data is not being leaked.

There are many tools available to choose from. Some things that a business owner needs to consider are the cost of the services, what is monitored, and how the data that is being monitored is accessed. Monitoring internet usage can be a full time job for one or more people, so the employer also needs to think about the additional manpower and resources that will be needed.

Cost is an important factor in the quality and services offered by monitoring programs. Nevertheless, do not let this deter you because as technology has become cheaper, these programs are a lot more affordable. In fact, basic monitoring programs can be found free of charge online. Other, more advanced programs can be fairly costly. Choosing an online remote monitoring service gives you the flexibility to have top of the line software support without having to pay for costly licenses or worry about upgrades.

You will also have to consider how in depth you want the monitoring to be. Basic monitoring programs keep lists of what websites your employees viewed without much additional data. More advanced programs can capture detailed information about their internet activities, such as how much time was spent on each website or what was downloaded or uploaded to and from the website. Other programs even log employee keystrokes, capture emails, and can even record voice.

There are two primary ways that data is remotely monitored. The most secure method is to have computer personnel monitor the information directly from the network. This prevents the data they monitor from being leaked to the internet. However, this would require that you hire employees who are skilled and may be too costly. On the other hand, outsourcing to an online monitoring service is much more economical, but all of the data is at risk to being intercepted by potential adversaries to your company.

Regardless of what type of service an employer ultimately chooses, they have the legal responsibility to inform their employees that their activities are being monitored. In many places, not making your employees aware of this constitutes illegal search and seizure and employers can be sued, fined, and even imprisoned. Having employees sign a legal document stating that they consent to monitoring is a simple way of informing them of monitoring without violating their rights.

A great way to increase productivity and profitability in a workplace that has internet access is through desktop monitoring services. They give business owners the ability to monitor internet usage without truly restricting access. And for some businesses, the increase in profits may even outweigh the costs of these services.