What Is Employee Monitoring Software?

Business use employee monitoring software with a central computer to see what employees are doing. This allows managers and administrators to check on employee productivity and to find out if employees are doing anything against company policy. A few of the common events that can be monitored with employee monitoring software are emails sent and received, application and document usage, website history, keystrokes and an attentiveness feature. By installing the software on a network, the administrator will be able to pull up and check on any computer in the network from his or her computer.

The use of employee monitoring software is common in many businesses, especially those where employees spend a majority of their time at a computer. Using this software lets employees know they cannot slack off, and lets managers know which employees are not being productive. To ensure productivity, and to ensure that the employee is not going against company policy, several events are checked.

Emails are one of the most commonly checked events, because emails are often sent over the company’s server. With employee monitoring software, an administrator can check all emails sent and received by the employee. The administrator also can read the contents of the emails to make sure they all pertain to work.

Application and document usage monitoring allows the administrator check any programs or files opened. For example, if the employee is playing a game on the computer, this will come up under application monitoring. If an employee is looking at an inappropriate image or opening documents that have nothing to do with the present task, then the document monitoring feature will capture this.

Checking website history via employee monitoring software is similar to application monitoring, but this specifically checks the Internet browser for websites visited. Some employees would rather surf game and social networking sites instead of work, which creates a large productivity deficit. Administrators can check and log all Internet activity by any employee.

Keystroke monitoring allows the administrator to read every key pressed, and every message written, by the employee. This is usually tedious for the administrator, and it is often easier to get the same information through website and document monitoring. At the same time, keystroke monitoring will let the administrator know exactly what the employee is typing, regardless of what he or she is doing.

If a computer does not seem to be in use, an administrator can display a pop-up window on the employee’s computer to monitor alertness. The point of this window is that the employee is supposed to click it within a short time frame. If not, it is an indication that the employee may not be paying attention or may be asleep.