Surveillance Software Use in the Workplace

Productivity lost in office has been become a significant issue which employers have to face today. The major factor making this be pitfalls is the personal use of company computers by employees. In response, for employers, they are also turning to sophisticated surveillance technology to monitor employees’ computer activities like email monitoring, IM chat monitoring and keystrokes monitoring.

Using surveillance software to monitor employees’ computer activities has more benefits for employers, but unfortunately today still there are some employers who not recognize that. Taking one case of our clients being example, recently I received one order about renting our server as their IT service vendor. For security sake, I put computer surveillance monitoring services as additional offer for their company. In the beginning, he didn’t notice what value of surveillance software. But when first report being sent to him, this report revealed what their employees have done during working such as employee visits to porn sites, on-line dating services, e-shopping portals, and even resume update sites, that really lets him off his jaw.

Alerts For Companies

Employees’ computer abuses come in many forms like downloading some music or movie from internet, watching streaming video like Youtube or Netflix, playing some online game and other internet activities non-related with working.

Fortunately most employers have taken surveillance technology into their companies and want to prevent employees’ internet abuses. However according of federal and state laws, employees surveillance monitoring is not generally permitted or provides some restrictions on monitoring employees doing. An example of this is in the case of employers who seek to prevent employees from openly viewing sexual explicit Web sites or posting lewd jokes on an on-line company bulletin board. This type of behavior could lead to a “hostile work environment” sexual harassment claim - which has the potential to exact an enormous financial and emotional burden on the company.

Solutions For Companies

So for companies good, what surveillance way employers should take to monitor employees doing? Below are a few of suggestions you can refer:

• Setting up right surveillance policy: Employers that plan to use surveillance software to monitor employee personal use of computers should begin by formulating a policy with the help of a competent employment law attorney. This process maybe takes a long way, but it is really worth of doing that. Establishing a legitimate business purpose for the monitoring that will take place and diminish any expectations of privacy an employee may have regarding their use of the Internet, computer files, electronic mail and other computer systems. This policy should be contained in the employee handbook and all employees should sign a consent form when they receive computer privileges at work.
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• Ensure Employee Notice: Employers should let employees know their all computer activities being monitored. The reason of doing this, one is making employees understand company property is belonging to company, being employees, they can’t abuse them. Another reason is preventing potential crime like confidential data leaking or talking company secrets with your rivals.
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• Building A Monitoring Service: Monitoring service is the most important step that business can establish an internet monitoring service via a surveillance technology service provider, which logs employees’ computer activities in real time and 24/7. A number of these service packets offer easily assessable online reports, which identify users by computer name, provides trends reports, and identifies the types of Internet content being accessed. It is also recommended that a company consider adding a File Transfer monitoring component given the growing number of employees involved with transferring proprietary information to locations external to the company.
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Until now more and more businesses have adopted employees’ surveillance service to protect their benefits not being lost. Though still it is involved with privacy laws, the purpose is simple – keep every employee is productive in their working and avoiding any loss.

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