Employee Monitoring in the Modern Workplace

Transcription

1 Employee Monitoring in the Modern Workplace Key benefits of implementing monitoring software MOJRA DAUTOVIĆ ACCELERATIO, LTD Zagreb

2 Contents Contents... 1 The modern workplace... 2 The Digital Era has changed the average workplace forever... 2 What can monitoring software help you with?... 3 A virtualized work environment requires a virtual monitoring tool... 3 Determining individual productivity and effort... 4 Reducing and preventing counterproductive behavior... 5 Increasing security and ensuring compliance with corporate policies... 6 Optimizing resources... 7 How can SysKit help with all this?... 8 A powerful server monitoring tool. Supports all Windows Servers, Citrix XenApp, RDS, etc Appendix Page 1 of 13

3 The modern workplace The Digital Era has changed the average workplace forever A universal goal that every company aspires to, is to achieve maximum productivity at minimum cost while maintaining a high level of information security. As work becomes more and more dynamic and digitalized, and as organizations grow at exponential speed, obtaining this goal is becoming an increasing challenge for The ultimate goal is maximum productivity at minimum cost. organizations around the world. For most companies, the Digital Era brought both opportunities but also potential risks and limitations. On one hand, a lot of the work has been automatized by task-specific software, communication and dissemination of information have been facilitated through the internet, working hours have become more flexible, and server infrastructures have become more complex all empowering factors for organizations to boost their productivity. Although the benefits are obvious, they are attainable only if everyone is doing their best at work and if they are using company resources responsibly. That is where the manager comes in. Their responsibility is to get the best from their employees and ensure a high level of productivity, which is not an easy task. On this mission, they encounter many challenges, which can be effectively overcome thanks to monitoring software. CHANGES IN THE MODERN WORKPLACE Daily use of task specific software Facilitated communication and information dissemination Flexible working hours Telecommuting Digital data storage Complex server infrastructure Page 2 of 13

4 What can monitoring software help you with? A virtualized work environment requires a virtual monitoring tool Even in the 19th century organizations were monitoring their employees with the primary purpose being production efficiency and theft prevention, and those needs are still present in the organizations of today. Productivity is still a top priority and security risks are as present as ever. But considering the changes brought by technological progress, the monitoring method had to change. The primitive methods of managers literally looking over employees shoulders, taking notes, counting employees upon arrival etc. have been replaced by more sophisticated methods, such as monitoring software. Due to all the changes brought by the virtualization of the work environment, many companies reach out to their IT departments to control what happens on their servers, especially to monitor employee activities. On this mission, managers and system administrators work together and encounter many challenges, which can be effectively overcome thanks to the progress in monitoring software development. CHALLENGES Determining individual productivity and effort Maintaining a fair pay-per-performance approach Ensuring employee compliance with corporate policies Optimizing resources Reducing and preventing employee misconduct Planning management strategies Workplace changes require changes in monitoring methods. Page 3 of 13

5 Determining individual productivity and effort M onitoring and measuring employee performance are difficult and complex tasks, especially in large companies with multiple departments and branches, but naturally, these are a most valuable source of information. Therefore, it is important to use various indicators of employee productivity. Monitoring software can provide you with robust productivity indicators, such as attendance, break duration, and time spent actively working on current tasks. When connected to the company's servers, all employee activity is logged whether they are actively using the servers, being idle or whether they are not connected at all. Monitoring software can easily retrieve this information, which can be used as an employee performance indicator. You can identify the most engaged employees and the ones who are not putting in as much effort as they should. This information provided by monitoring software can be used to maintain a fair payper-performance approach to determining salary. Expert researchers state that implementing a monitoring policy boosts productivity precisely through fairnessbased motivation (Pierce, Snow and McAfee, 2014). Honest and hardworking employees become more motivated due to the certainty that they will be paid in accord with their effort and the impression that they are differentiated by management in regard to the less hardworking employees. This is not only retroactively important, since managers can use the information retrieved via monitoring software to plan future strategies and interventions. They can identify aspects of the work organization or individual employees that are underperforming, modify their interventions according to an existing issue and therefore realize employees full productivity potential. Page 4 of 13

6 Reducing and preventing counterproductive behavior I n the modern workplace, employees are tempted by a large array of distractions, which often lead them to engage in non-work-related activities and waste time during working hours. Results from the U.S. Wasting Time at Work Survey from 2014 show that 89% of respondents reported wasting time at work every day, which is a 20% increase compared to results from the previous year. Moreover, 62% of respondents reported wasting up to 1 hour daily on non-work-related activities, while 26% of them waste 2 hours or more. And shirking is not the only issue, there is absenteeism as well. Not only does the company suffer significant financial and productivity losses due to unscheduled absences but also partial shift absences and lateness. CareerBuilder reported that 14% of employees arrive at work late at least once a week in the U.S. And U.K. survey by Heathrow Express from 2012 revealed that not only does lateness influence employee performance, but also the performance of others, as was reported by 48% of respondents. Therefore, it is no surprise that the same research estimates the cost of lateness to be measured in billions of pounds. Monitoring employee activity on your servers can help reduce and prevent such productivity and financial losses. This information can be used for on-time managerial interventions retroactively, but can also serve as a tool of prevention. Informing your employees of the implementation of such monitoring tools will decrease their willingness to engage in this type of counterproductive behavior due to the potential consequences, such as contract termination or wage reduction. More time and effort will be invested in work-related tasks. Page 5 of 13

7 Increasing security and ensuring compliance with corporate policies I t is often very hard to determine whether your employees are following company rules and regulations, especially those applying to the use of company software. Keeping track of whether your employees are using licensed software, how much data they are downloading, and how they are modifying existing data how they are using company servers in general takes hours and hours of work, and in the end you may still not get the whole picture. The lower the monitoring degree, the higher the risk of non-compliance, and noncompliance means a security risk. Whether it is the risk of theft, sensitive data leakage, unauthorized data modification, legal issues, or server performance issues, they are all equally harmful for the organization. Monitoring software can efficiently detect whether the rules are being followed, and if not, who is breaking them. Of course, the level of monitoring you choose depends on the company needs. Some companies, such as banks and other organizations in the financial industry, require a very deep level of monitoring, such as monitoring s, chat, keystrokes and webpages visited, due to a high security risk of sensitive data leakage, whether from employees misuse of information or outside threats. Page 6 of 13

8 Optimizing resources T he resources required to perform daily tasks differ from department to department and from employee to employee, which results in hundreds or even thousands of applications that need to be tracked. To optimize your company s software resources, it is imperative to know which applications are being used by specific employees and how frequently. That way you can ensure that everyone has the necessary resources to perform their tasks but also prevent the high and unnecessary cost of creating shelfware the hoarding of unused software, which is still a big problem in organizations around the globe. The most common causes of software not being used are IT departments that are too busy to implement the software properly, a low understanding of the software by the intended users, a lack of IT resources and insufficient vendor support. Whatever the cause, according to a survey by 1E, unused software is costing U.S. companies $6.6 billion annually, while U.K. costs amount to $991 million. In addition, monitoring software can give you a better idea of how individual employees are utilizing system resources by tracking CPU, memory and network usage per employee. This information is indispensable for capacity planning to ensure optimal server performance. You can be proactive and predict your farm s requirements based on observed trends in system resource usage, and therefore prevent potential issues and ensure a high-quality end-user experience and minimum downtime when issues appear. Page 7 of 13

9 How can SysKit help with all this? A powerful server monitoring tool. Supports all Windows Servers, Citrix XenApp, RDS, etc. What is SysKit? It is an agentless tool designed for monitoring Windows and Citrix XenApp servers, RDS, RD Gateway, workstations, etc. You can monitor user activities, application usage, server performance, license consumption, bandwidth usage, and hardware and software inventory. Why monitor employees with SysKit? Monitor user activities on your servers Track application usage and license consumption Gain insight into your bandwidth usage Keep track of all your hardware and software assets All reports are available through a web UI Employee monitoring with SysKit To see how SysKit can help boost your company s productivity with its employee monitoring features, take a closer look at its capabilities for user monitoring on the following pages. Page 8 of 13

10 Monitor logons, logoffs and time spent in different session states You can get precise information of when your employees arrive at work, when they leave and how much time they actually spent working. You can get the exact amount of time that they spent being active, idle, disconnected or on remote control. Monitor users, apps, performance and bandwidth usage from one UI There is no need to install multiple tools that monitor different user-related activities such as application usage, CPU and memory usage, network traffic and license consumption. You can monitor all these user-related indicators from one single interface. Automatic calculation of payroll The challenge of determining a fair wage based on the actual hours of active work is not that challenging with SysKit. Other than being a precise indicator of employee activity on the servers, our tool provides you with a Resource Cost Overview Report, which automatically calculates how much to pay employees who have a defined hourly rate. Automatizes time-consuming processes Manual retrieval of information on how your servers are being used by company employees usually takes hours and hours, and there is probably always some information that is missing. With SysKit, you get the necessary data within minutes and it will be displayed in structured professional-looking reports. Page 9 of 13

11 Easy tracking of license usage SysKit allows you to track which application licenses are being consumed by your employees. You can use this information to reduce unnecessary costs by detecting over-licensed applications or acquire extra resources if needed. The License Reports are also the easiest way of ensuring your compliance with license terms and avoiding vendor fines if audited. Following system resources consumption per user The built-in User Performance Reports tell you how much system resources are being consumed by specific users. This information can be used to optimize system performance, to troubleshoot issues and for the purposes of effective capacity planning.. Try it! Take SysKit for a spin by downloading it now. A 30-day free trial and more info are available at: If you have any questions, contact us at: sales@acceleratio.net. And what do others think? SysKit has an intuitive interface with detailed information that help us manage our Terminal Server Farm as well as our other stand-alone Terminal Servers. Chris Buckley Advocates, Inc. Before SysKit it was challenging to determine who had accessed the terminal server and when, and how long users were on the server. Keith Roberts Pioneer, Inc. Page 10 of 13

12 Appendix 1. LIST OF AVAILABLE USER-RELATED REPORTS* REPORT DESCRIPTION User Reports Group of reports displaying logon and logoff times, session states, bandwidth usage and more. Most Used Applications Shows most frequently used applications per specified user, server or time period. Users per Application Tracks the number of users who are using an installed application over a selected period. Application Usage History Shows application usage by user and different states in a log format. User Application Timeline Tracks which user used a specific application total time, when they started and ended. Application Instances Displays the number of application instances can be filtered per user in a selected time period. Concurrent Applications per User Daily view of the number of concurrent application instances per user. Suite License Details Displays a list of users that consumed a particular license. Page 11 of 13

13 Client License Compliance Tracks the number of licenses used per device or per user. Client License Details Displays a list of users that consumed a particular license. Blocked IP Addresses Shows a list of potentially malicious IP addresses blocked via Windows firewall rules. File Access Audit Log Shows user file access history and actions performed on files. User Performance Reports 3 reports showing overall processor and working set performance by user. *This list singles out reports or groups of reports that are relevant to monitoring user activities. Other than the User Reports, SysKit offers Application Reports, License Reports, Audit Reports, Performance Reports and Inventory. Some of the reports in the table above pertain to those other types of report. The description of the listed reports is limited to user activities, but they also display additional information. To view a full list of available reports with detailed descriptions click here. Acceleratio Ltd. is a software development company that specializes in developing high-quality software solutions for SharePoint, Office 365, Microsoft Remote Desktop Services and Citrix, so that admins and consultants across the globe can work carefree. Our products are loved by more than 2000 satisfied customers worldwide and nothing makes us happy like a smile on a customer s face. That is why customers can always count on our full support and our commitment to continuously improving our products using the latest technologies. Page 12 of 13

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