Remote employee monitoring is the most popular way to check attendance, manage remote work and evaluate remote employee performance, whenever direct results cannot be monitored or evaluated.

Trust is very important and a result based approach is highly required, but not always sufficient. Remote working is a great alternative for working from an office, but despite its advantages, it also poses some threats. Let’s see what are the options to maximize the remote work efficiency and security.

Table of contents

The main tasks concerning remote employees for businesses and organizations

Employee monitoring – best practices

Statlook – a professional and easy-to-use solution to remote employee monitoring

The main tasks concerning remote employees for businesses and organizations:

Manage security threats

The company client details, copyright materials, trade secrets, logins, passwords and other sensitive data are much more vulnerable when the employees work from home. Monitoring employees is a key element of endpoint security. Are you able to connect to your employees’ computers at any time and help them or change the security settings?

Protect your data

Data Leakage Protection (DLP) is a common practice for, both, personal data and business data. Monitoring remote employees’ activity is one of the ways to secure data and prevent potential leaks. Are you sure your data is well protected and you have the right tools to check it?

Check remote employee efficiency

Checking your workers using online chats, e-mails or their VPN connections is possible, but it is not the most efficient way to monitor your remote staff. Making sure that people do productive work instead of taking care of their personal matters is as important as having your workers available for meetings, calls and emergency tasks during their remote working hours. Using their computers is one thing, but do they use productive apps and websites? Is the time spent actively or maybe the applications are just idly running?

Optimize the costs of remote work

Working from home generates some savings from the start as employees do not use your premises, but can you make sure that your costs are optimized? Software and hardware inventory, license compliance, checking software usage – all these things, if performed remotely, can bring you additional savings without any harm for the remote workers.

Employee monitoring – best practices:

Company assets – company rules and regulations

The best way to manage remote workers is to provide them with a computer they can use for work purposes only. Monitoring private computers is much more tricky (although possible). If employees use dedicated workstations they have to obey the rules and the question of their privacy becomes less important, as they have their own, private computers and smartphones to deal with private matters.

Prevention - block applications and websites 

You are not hunting witches, the best way to avoid unproductive work time is to block all kinds of undesired applications and websites as well as removable devices like pendrives or HDD and SSD disks. The employees can still access them using their private smartphones and computers – but then it is just a break in their work, as they are not using company assets  

Do not spy on your staff – just monitor them, and help them

Reasonable monitoring – good, hardcore surveillance – bad. Nobody likes to be “big-brothered” without their consent, so collect only the information relevant to your business. What is more, check the local law and choose a solution that is not interfering with your employees’ everyday tasks. If the solution includes helpdesk and remote control options, make sure your remote employees are aware of that, as they can greatly benefit from it.

Clarity and  transparency 

The most important is to inform the employees about the monitoring on their computers. It is also very useful to clarify the way the monitoring works and explain what is the acceptable use of the assets being monitored. The way you inform your workers is in most cases up to you, but make sure they are familiar with it.

Choose the right tools

As with any software or tools you choose, finding the most suitable solution is a key to success. You need to remember about the reasons why you do it, and respect your employees privacy as much as possible, having in mind the security and efficiency. The collected data should be well protected, stored in a secure location and the access to them should be convenient but safe.

Statlook – a professional and easy-to-use solution to remote employee monitoring:

Managing security threats with Statlook

• Remote software and hardware management
• Data Leakage Protection (DLP)
• User management

Protecting your data with Statlook

• USB blocking and authorizing access
• Employee activity monitoring
• Printout monitoring
• GDPR personal data sets management

Checking remote employee efficiency with Statlook

• Monitoring applications
• Monitoring Internet (visited websites and file transfer)
• Blocking applications and websites
• Recording and commenting on work breaks
• Working time reports
• Monitoring employee productivity

Optimizing the costs of remote work with Statlook

• Software and hardware use – optimization of assets
• Helpdesk / Service desk – easy to use ticket system
• Remote help and remote connection
• Remote access to files, registry and processes without interrupting work

Statlook implementation, even in large companies, is easy and does not require any additional expenses – you can have it up and running in one day!

The monitoring data is stored in your own database (MS SQL or PostgreSQL) and is well protected, while the reports can be accessed via Internet – safety of local database & convenient access.

Statlook collects only statistical data and does not collect any content typed by employees such as: e-mails, chats, logins, passwords, etc. – privacy of the workers and legality of your monitoring one of the strongest advantages of the system.

Choose the FREE Version or check the 30-day Statlook license for all your assets to start your remote employee monitoring.