Monday 30 April 2012

My Team monitor

My Team monitor is an Employee Monitoring Software system that allows a manager to monitor remote team members. This is a really interesting idea for those planning to set up an online business with remote employees.
Many remote employees are paid on a 'piece-work' basis, ie. paid for every tangible piece of work that is produced, but what can you do if you are paying for work-time rather than actual tangible output?
This is where an Employee Monitoring Software system comes in.. The manager set up an account (no software needed at this point), and invites the team members to join the system and download software onto their PC. The system works by acting firstly as a logging-in system, ie. records to 'log-in' and 'log-out' times. It is a little more advanced than that though because periodically, the system takes a snapshot of the PC screen to show that the team member is still working.
As far as the employee is concerned, they only have to remember to 'clock' in and out of the system. Naturally, there could be initial resistance to installing a system that 'spies' on activity, but if it's activity that you are being paid for, I don't see that it should be too much of a problem. I would say however, that, as an employee, if you are in the habit of browsing the web or 'face-booking' during work hours, then I would recommend that you log out of the system before doing so..
For the employer or manager, once they sign in to the Employee Monitoring Software system (done from the web, so could presumably could be monitored from a tablet or smart-phone), the team appears with a time-line of activity including assessment of mouse-clicks and keystrokes. There is also a display of the last few screen shots as thumbnails which presumably can be clicked on to display in larger format.
As an online earner, this software strikes me as something that could quickly move you up from a lone-operator to being at the centre of a larger-scale operation.

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