Employee monitoring software is an amazingly useful, yet somewhat awkward technology. It can help your IT department weed out your worst time-wasters and layabouts — and even those who are sharing your corporate secrets. But while you may need to keep an eye on your employees, no IT or HR manager has the time to monitor the thousands of keystrokes that happen in a given work day across a busy network.
As a result, organizations that decide to “get tracking” have to make a few tough choices right off. Do you want a product that logs all keystrokes for later review? Do you want software that blocks Web sites and e-mail containing specific words or phrases? Or will you choose something more comprehensive that pushes reports to managers, allowing them to act on their suspicions to snare problem users?
The basic programs are cheaper, but they also require a bigger time commitment on the part of the IT or HR department. The solutions that can generate comprehensive reports can be more complex and costly.
Either way, says Jennifer Perrier-Knox, senior research analyst at the London, Ont.-based Info-Tech Research Group, organizations should do it right or not at all. “It’s one of those things that, if you do it, you have to commit to it, regardless of whether you go low-tech or high-tech,” she says.
But not a lot of companies are making this commitment. The adoption of employee monitoring software is not yet very deep, especially in Canada, Perrier-Knox says. It’s more common in the U.S., particularly at companies with legal or regulatory mandates to meet.
Many Canadian companies block well-known sites such as Facebook and MySpace, or spot-read e-mail. But, in most cases, it’s a complaint, or concern around a specific employee, that leads an organization to decide to monitor that individual, explains Perrier-Knox.
Monitoring mavens Still, at least one company isn’t satisfied with random checks and targeting obvious offenders — and it’s paying off. An IT manager at a mid-sized Toronto law firm (who did not want to be identified) says his 50 licences of SpectorSoft’s Spector 360 has returned to the firm’s HR manager 30–40 per cent of her working hours.