Employee tracking software is a business tool that can help your company succeed in many ways, making it increasingly common. More businesses recognize its value in providing data that can enhance productivity, safeguard against insider data threats, and improve process efficiency.
With this growing popularity, it’s become essential to learn how to monitor PC usage at the workplace in the right manner. And it all begins with the initial implementation.
This process consists of three major parts that we’re going to cover in more detail:
- Choosing the software
- Devising a monitoring strategy
- Employee onboarding
Choosing the Best PC Monitoring Program
The first step to proper implementation is choosing the right software for your business. You should do this with careful consideration of a couple of factors.
First, consider the features. What do you want your employee monitoring software to accomplish? This will mainly depend on what you want to track, which we will discuss later. For now, you can explore various free trials of computer usage monitoring software to find one that includes all the functions you need before making a purchase.
Which brings us to the next consideration – the price. Although you can certainly find a free program to monitor computer activity, you should be aware that those systems are usually limited in one way or another, whether in terms of the number of possible users or the kind of features or something else. So make sure you take all of this into account in order to land on the best value for money.
And finally, think about the technical details, such as installation and data storage. A cloud employee monitoring software solution is the best bet in most cases both because of the easy installation and no storage requirements, but it can’t hurt to weigh it against the self-hosted option which gives you a bit more control.
Think About What You’ll Be Tracking
Once you have chosen the best computer monitoring software, it’s time to devise a strategy of what you’re going to monitor and why. This is extremely important because blindly tracking everything you can is a sure way to waste time and resources as well as potentially hurt your employees’ personal privacy.
It all starts with your business goals. What do you want to accomplish by monitoring employees? Is it greater data security? Improved efficiency? Better task management? How you answer this question will determine which metrics you should take into consideration, how you should best collect and analyze them, and what criteria you’re going to use to determine success.
In a word, a good strategy will inform you on how to monitor employees’ computer activities in the best way possible.
Talk to Your Employees
On to what’s probably the trickiest part of the whole monitoring software implementation process – informing your employees about it.
Now, before you do anything (including installing the software), you need to make sure that you’re fully acquainted with your country’s laws concerning this type of employee control. In some cases, you’ll be required to inform your employees about monitoring or even ask for their consent. But even if you’re allowed to track them secretly, it’s still advisable to be open about it.
Talking to your workers about this new addition to your business strategy will promote transparency and build trust. They might not like the fact that their computer activities are monitored at first, but knowing about it will give them the opportunity to ask questions and voice their concerns. And this is a huge step towards maintaining your company culture despite tracking software implementation.
Conclusion
Computer monitoring software will be extremely beneficial to your business but only its proper implementation can ensure that this success comes naturally.