Is it possible to monitor employee’s laptop while working from home?

I work on company's laptop. Can my company track time on it?

The situation
You work on a company's laptop. You have this laptop with you at home and in your business trips. And of course, you do not always work on it. When you do not work, you might want to use it for your personal needs, like browsing the Internet, accessing your online banking or your personal emails, chatting, playing games. This is all OK if you are done with your work duties for today. But there is a big concern that you have.

Your concerns
So, the concern is: you use company's laptop for your personal needs; can your company track time, Internet usage, software usage, basically anything on its laptop?

The answer
Yes, your company can track time, Internet usage, software and documents usage on its own laptop – see monitor laptop employees

At first, your company is legally allowed to do it.

Your company can technically track its laptop using third-party software in the following cases:

1. If at the moment when you receive your laptop there is software installed already. There already can be some time tracking software installed.
2. If you ever physically connect your laptop to the company's local network. When you login to your company's server, some software can be installed automatically; many companies have this process centralized. You might not even notice as installation can be "quiet".
3. If you ever connect to the company's network using VPN. This is just another way to connect to the company's local network. So, see the item 2.

Using time tracking software your company can record the following information:

1. Computer monitoring – Computer related activities – login, logout time, usage interval;
   
2. Software usage monitoring - software usage, documents accessed;
   
3. Internet monitoring – web-sites visited.
   
4. Time spent on each of these tasks.
   
5. User login names.


6. Screens, keystrokes, emails or chats content.

Your company cannot technically track its laptop using third-party software in the following case:
If you install only Microsoft software, if you do not install any company's or third-party software, if you connect to your company's work environment using Terminal Server, Citrix server, Remote Desktop or VNC connection – then it will be not possible to monitor your laptop using some third-party software.

Your company can monitor Internet usage with some hardware, if you use company's Internet access. Just in this case it is not possible to see time spent on each web-page.

NesterSoft Inc., Nov 06, 2009

Toronto Swine Flu (H1N1) hysteria

Outside Etobicoke City Hall, Sat Oct 31, 2009, 11:20am

Public is really risking to catch cold (Weather: Overcast, +12C, Wind 41km/h, Wind gusts: 65km/h, officially issued Wind warning for the City of Toronto) in a several-hours wait hoping to get a Swine Flu vaccination.

Following broad media coverage of the alleged “H1N1 pandemia” people line up for the vaccination. Crowd looks upset and scared, general atmosphere is near-panic. There are more than a dozen security guards, 2 police cruisers, and two police officers are walking around. CTV news is conducting interviews.

Some statistics: Previous SARS epidemic was a “probable case“ of 44 deaths in 2002 - 2003. At the same time traffic accidents in 2003 caused 2,778 deaths.

NesterSoft WorkTime coupon

There is a 20% off coupon for WorkTime: D109

With this discount get WorkTime Professional for $39.96, WorkTime Home for $23.96, and it applies to multiple licenses purchase as well.
Expires: Oct 31, 2009
Direct link: http://www.nestersoft.com/worktime/register.shtml?coupon=D109

WorkTime – time tracking software tracks computer-related activities: projects and tasks, applications, documents, web-sites and games.

Monitor internet usage

Monitor internet usage - protect your company, your money and build a good working environment.

Internet usage monitoring - how can it help you.

Most of employees know how difficult it is to find a good job. But what employers know - this is even more difficult to find a good employee.
What is a good job? It is simple - good salary, stable company, nice and friendly environment, interesting tasks.
And who is a good employee? Let's try to define - a good employee is professional, cooperative and enthusiastic, it is someone who you can rely to, who understands everything from one word, who can discuss problems and propose solutions, who can recognize its own mistakes, oh and also has a good common sense and intuition! I hope I did not forget anything important :-) Of course this is not a complete definition, I am sure employers might expect more.
And yes, it is not easy to find such an employee. Many people look very enthusiastic on a job interview, but after they simply lose their interest to the job they where looking for so hard. And everything looks good - the workplace, the salary. The most common issue - employees became not cooperative with time - they don't really work fast, the don't really want to understand tasks, they simply lose interest to the working process. Why? Because everything is good! Every next day looks like the previous one. And besides, now there is an Internet access available. And in Internet - there is so much interesting you can find. Some people can spend the whole days browsing. What is Internet for them? Communication, interesting information, games! Internet is a big issue now. Before, for example, when there was no TV, people would read more books. Same with Internet: if there was no Internet access available, employees would spend more time working.
And now you as an employer, you have the task to solve. You see the problem - there are employees who spend too much time in the Internet or doing other things not related to their work. You start thinking if you should monitor internet usage in your company. But you don't want your company to turn into a strict military organization. Why? Because, for example, enthusiastic employees will lose their enthusiasm and will simply run away from you. Because, in general, you understand that there are good professionals in your company, there are less professional but cooperative employees and there are employees who don't really work well - not everyone is so bad, right? Besides, you understand that people need their time to relax and if they want to browse Internet a bit - it is OK. Also you don't want to break anyone's privacy. But still - you need to protect your company and your money somehow.
So, what all the above means? It means that you still need to monitor internet usage, but you need such a solution that shows you the main negative trends in the company. Like, for example, you might want to find out, who in your company spends too much time browsing the Internet or who spends more than 2 hours in the Internet. Or you might want to define, what are the most popular Internet resources not related to the working process (some employees still might need Internet to solve work related tasks, right?). You don't need to monitor every keystroke or screens. All you need - is to be able to find out trends that affect productivity in the company. Then you might want to generate reports and to send them out to all departments. This will be a good stimulus for all your employees, who think that all days are the same and boring.

WorkTime - monitor internet usage in your company and create a better working environment!
NesterSoft Inc., Sep 25, 2009

time tracking software - higher productivity

How can time tracking software help you to keep higher productivity

Either you need some time tracking software for yourself or for employee monitoring - WorkTime can suit all your needs in time tracking.

If you are looking for a productivity monitoring software, with WorkTime you can easily solve many important tasks, like, for example:
- Monitoring computer: with WorkTime you can setup a constant invisible automatic computer monitoring that will help you in tracking employee productivity level.
- Monitoring Internet usage: as for today this is one of the biggest issues, especially in large companies, where a lot of time is simply wasted on Internet related activities. With WorkTime you can monitor Internet usage automatically. WorkTime reports will show you how much time is actually spent working or browsing the Internet. Also, for example, you can find out, what are the most popular Internet resources employees use or who uses Internet the most.
- Employee time tracking: with WorkTime you can automate employee time tracking process. WorkTime will record automatically for you all computer related activities by the employees: applications, documents used, WEB sites visited etc.
- Employee time clock software: with WorkTime you will always know when your employees start and finish working.

Time tracking software market proposes you a lot of time tracking applications, but not very often you can find an application that covers all your needs in time tracking. As per our customers (we get such feedbacks very often), WorkTime is one of the most intuitive and powerful monitoring software and they were looking for something like this for years!

NesterSoft
WorkTime® - Time Tracking Software
http://www.nestersoft.com/worktime

Time tracking software - get organized in times of crisis

How time tracking software can help companies in times of this financial crisis

Crisis is not an easy time to work, it requires from companies a lot of effort. It is constantly required to adjust to changes on the market, be competitive: if sales go down - you need to create a better proposition, provide a better quality, give a better price and look for new ideas. All these tasks are not easy for big companies, because their huge infrastructure simply does not allow to react quickly to a constantly changing situation on the market. To quickly adjust to the market you need to arrange all processes to function properly inside of the company. And it is obviously not that easy to organize such a big team, so everyone does the best, everyone is very professional and everyone shows a good understanding of the current situation. So, how to organize your team, how to create a good tonus in the company?
Time tracking software is a good solution for these kind of proposes. Time tracking software automatically tracks usage of computers collecting information about software usage, also
monitor internet usage and time spent on it. This is, for example, what can be solved using time tracking software:
Employee monitoring - discover employees, who spend too much of their working time on activities not related to work.
Employee time tracking - discover departments with management issues: too much of overtime, some employees are really overloaded and some - don't really do anything.
Monitoring software - Automatically you can get a real picture of how the software is used in the company - this can help to reduce expenses by discovering unused software licenses.
Productivity monitoring software - Automatic scheduled reports can help to stimulate productivity level in the company - for example, once per week you can send reports to all departments, so they know how they did last week.


WorkTime - Time Tracking Software
http://www.nestersoft.com/worktime

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Blog started: 2009-08-07 15:18:30