workplace monitoring Archives

Posted on April 30, 2019 by Wifi Attendance Super Admin

You are determined on working towards company goals but how will you get there if your workforce does not resonate with it?

To keep your workforce motivated and empathetic towards the vision you have in mind, you need to set an efficient protocol for workforce management.

The main aim of workforce management program is to extract best performances out of employees at all levels. Designing an effective strategy becomes difficult as companies fail to address the essential challenges that are faced with by the process.

There are certain key aspects which significantly impact the method. Below are the five necessary steps that affect the output of your workforce management strategy.

1. Let the Manager do Talent Management.

He knows people and their skills better!

2. Gauge the role and responsibility of each employee.

Identifying critical roles is crucial for business.

3. Make sure only relevant data is fed to the manager’s PC

Data that helps in recruitment, performance analysis and other aspects of talent management!

4. Intricate developments in succession plan.

Focus on creating descendant roadmaps at multiple levels

5. Harmonize Workforce and company goals!

Craft mutually dependent strategies for talent and business management.

Workforce Management 5 Steps For Getting It Right!

Posted on April 5, 2019 by Wifi Attendance Super Admin

Let’s start with a shower of truth!

Sexual harassment at workplace is unfortunately not uncommon.
Not all victims include females.
Not all perpetrators are male.

No matter what gender, a boss, a customer, or a coworker can be involved in an activity of sexual harassment.

For a person who goes through sexual harassment, the reaction depends on many factors. Certain situations can make you uncomfortable, while others make you angry and devastated. Workplace harassment can change the way you look at your career forever.

In a situation of apparent case of sexual harassment, you might feel confused and scared to make your next move?

Which is why this article has accumulated a sequence of steps you can take to deal with sexual harassment at work.

1. Understand the criteria of sexual harassment

First and foremost, you should know whether an action or a situation comes within the criteria of sexual harassment.

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Here are the criteria that define certain actions and statements as sexual harassment:

The action or statement should offend the victim. So, if an employee takes an offending statement casually and finds it funny, it won’t be a case of sexual harassment. Suppose, some other female employee overhears that comment, then, she might feel offended. In this case, the other female employee becomes a victim. So, a statement or a situation should be in the “unwelcome” zone for the victim in order to qualify as sexual harassment.
The person feeling offended by a statement or a comment should be reasonable. For instance, if a person compliments another’s dress or looks. In this case, the factors will include the relationship between those two people. Many other questions also become a part of the assessment. How those two people normally behave with each other? What were the tone and gesture of that compliment? Is there a third person agreeing to the creepiness of that compliment? These questions make the decision making complicated in the case of sexual harassment.
The seriousness and pervasive nature of behavior matters as well. In some cases, the message is serious and direct, which makes it sufficient for this criteria.

With the above-assessment, it is clear that classifying sexual harassment is not a sharp cut. Situations can become really complicated to analyze. And even the perception of sexual harassment can differ from person to person.

The approach of a victim also plays a big role. If a victim keeps on continuing a relationship, despite the sexual harassment, it is not considered as “unwelcome”.

But the moment you feel uncomfortable by someone’s comment or inappropriate behavior, it turns it into an unwelcome scenario.

2. Decide your next steps

A third employee can easily say that you should shut down sexual harassment at the moment it is happening.

But, this is not possible in every scenario. If the other person is your senior, you might feel intimidated to call him/her out. Sometimes, you want to keep your job, which is why you just try to ignore.

That being said, it is important that you stop that sexual harasser whenever possible. This sends a clear message that you are not accepting any sort of inappropriate behavior. This way, you give power to your sexual harassment case. The question regarding this will be asked during the investigation process.

Find the strength in you to overcome the concerns and feelings. And have faith and trust in your organization’s ability to take appropriate action.

Since the inception and reach of #MeToo movement, submitting your complaint against sexual harassment has become more convenient. More complaints are accepted in every sector, so you don’t have to worry about not getting heard.

No matter where you work, what’s your designation, age or gender, corporate sexual harassment has become a primary issue all across the globe.

3. Follow complaint procedure provided for sexual harassment in your company

Every company has a policy and procedure regarding sexual harassment cases. This policy involves the steps you can take to file your complaint. You can check the employee handbook to understand this procedure.

Mostly, such guidelines ask you to submit your complaint to the team manager. This is applicable only if the manager is not a perpetrator in the case. You can also submit your complaint to the HR department.

Some companies assign an expert to handle these matters, so you might be asked to send your complaint to that person. If your company has more than 15 employees, it comes within the sexual harassment laws.

You can follow the steps requested by your company officials and file a written as well as a verbal complaint to the suitable authorities. If you are not comfortable going to a certain person, you can decide to file a report to any working manager.

It is important to take immediate actions and avoid waiting for too long. The state laws apply for certain days in the case of sexual harassment. You should find out that period in your location and act before that passes.

4. Write your formal letter to complain regarding a sexual harassment encounter

A verbal complaint is fine, but you should make your complaint formal with a letter. Here are all the elements you should include in your formal letter against sexual harassment:

Use a clear subject line saying, “This is a formal complaint against sexual harassment.” Mentioning the term ‘sexual harassment’ is key here. This allows the authorities to understand the seriousness of the issue. This way, they restrict to take your complaint lightly.
You should try to provide a timeline of everything in this letter. Try to include dates, names, documented actions, and other details. This will increase the strength of your complaint. You should try to list a witness after consulting that person. This can help during the investigation process.
Write about the comments, the person who made comments, the time and the consequences you faced.
Make sure you clearly define whether the sexual harassment was a one-time event or it is ongoing. One-time actions are way different than the continuous pervasive behavior. So, you need to be clear about the information you give via the formal letter.
You can also include any concerns, which you are fighting in your head. So, for example, you can inform that you worry about not getting your raise because you denied a date proposal from your senior.

5. Think about the need for a private attorney

In ideal situations, your company should act promptly and resolve the problem fairly. However, if you don’t see that happening, you have the right to hire your private attorney. This way, you can take your case outside the company for a fair decision.

It is possible that you feel unhappy with the way company officials handle your case. You might disagree with the case and evidence they showcase. In that situation, it would be wise to hire your own private attorney.

You will also need an attorney, in case, you find a retaliation against your complaint. Such retaliation is illegal and punishable by law. So, an attorney can help you get justice.

What should an organization do to deal with such complaints?

Keep your employees informed about the organizational policies against sexual harassment.
Allows different options for victims to file their complaint. Assign different managers and officials as options for the victims.
For every complaint, assign a member of the staff with all the details of the complaint. This member should understand company policies.
Create an investigation strategy and designate the right knowledgeable people for the job.
Communicate with the victim and assure about the protection against retaliation or any other inappropriate action.
Discuss every detail of the action or comment with the victim and collect important data such as time, dates, witnesses, situations and other informational pieces.
Inform, the accused, about the complaint and warn against unethical or retaliatory acts.
Assure every involved party regarding a fair investigation.
9. Follow a clear process to interview witnesses. Use questions that allow open-ended answers to get maximum facts.
10. Do not judge the accused before the allegations get the facts. Interview the accused with respect and listen to his or her version as well.
11. Collect all the evidence and create an overall picture of the situation.

With that, company authorities can reach a fair decision.

Hopefully, you have found what you were looking for!

Posted on September 25, 2018 by Wifi Attendance Super Admin

Corporates across the world have a tough time weaning employees from spending a lot of office time using the internet for personal interactions.

If you look into the statistics, you will notice an alarming number of man hours that are wasted by employees who drain office internet for personal reasons.

Companies which have employees hooked to the internet for long hours grab the bandwidth that is meant for official browsing. This causes a steep rise in their costs.Hence this is a serious concern that needs to be fixed at the earliest.

For all those companies who are looking for actionable ways to track the usage of the internet by their employees, here they come.

1. Unleash The Promise of a Wireless Router

Your office WiFi network can be connected to certain wireless routers which closely monitor all the sites that were browsed by your employees.

All you need to do is to set up the login by keying in the IP address of your wireless router on the search bar of your office default browser. After the initial set up procedure is completed, the wireless router will shed light on all the online activities of your employees once you click the ‘Logs’ option.

Alternatively, you can check out some routers which can help you block some websites, restricting your employees to browse them during working hours.

2. Install the Multi-Purpose Employee Monitoring Software

A supervisory software can effectively monitor the websites that your employees browse during work hours. It sends out consolidated weekly reports collating the browsing information of every employee to their managers’ official email IDs and also to their individual IDs.

Such weekly reports are not only easy to read, they can also become instruments to improve the productivity of your teams. You can also use this application to monitor employees working from remote locations.

These computer programs show up reminders in the form of popups on employee screens to restrict the browsing of private websites during office hours. Additionally, they can also step in to keep a watchful eye on the number of internet transactions that your employees initiate.

These transactions can cause virus attacks plaguing your official computer networks. Some software go a step further to notify the management about employees accessing restricted sites including chatting interfaces during office hours.

3. Keep A Tab on Network Traffic

In order to lay hands on the browsing activity of your employees, you may keep a tab on the traffic that is generated inside your official network. You can install a firewall which provides information regarding the information that was exchanged between your employees through the official server.

However, this option does not provide concrete data points linked to the duration that your employee was online. You would not know whether your employee actually read a news article or whether it was simply left open as an idle page in the background.

4. Implement Mandates Linked to Employee Internet Usage

It is very important for companies to follow certain best practices so as to curtail the unwarranted use of the internet for personal reasons. Here are some of them:

Clearly Indicate Your Internet Usage Policy

A policy which will shed light on the expected behavior of employees with regard to use of office bandwidth for other purposes should be in place.

Adopt the Practice of Constant Monitoring

It helps to impress upon your employees that they are being constantly watched.. Notifying employees about this will not only build trust but will also enable teams to adhere to the internet usage policy.

Action monitoring options

Another alternative is to install tracking software that provide decision makers with video clippings of all the browsing activities of employees.

Data points such as the amount of time employees spent online along with the online applications they opened can help companies better assess the internet usage during working hours.

Key Takeaways

When it comes to productivity, time and effort are the two important factors. Almost all the corporates face the issue concerning the unwarranted use of the internet for personal communications during office hours.

In an attempt to monitor employees for their internet usage, the above tips can help companies keep a close watch on the productivity of their teams. They can also improve the number of man-hours put in by employees as part of their internet usage monitoring procedure.

Posted on June 26, 2018 by Wifi Attendance Super Admin

When everything is doing well in your organization, you do not think too much about it. However, when productivity slackens, the pace slows down, may even grind to a halt and cost you your business.

Productive work and unproductive work are separated by a hazy line. Most times, unproductive cannot be discerned from productive work. Many tasks in the workspace are not clearly defined and many other tasks are of a collaborative nature.

In this context, it is important to realize that workplace monitoring is an important activity which ensures that employees end up doing the work that they are actually paid for.

Whereas employee monitoring is manually possible for those organizations with only a few employees, the same is impossible for an organization that employs thousands of employees in many different locations on regular and other shifts.

Such organizations use monitoring (oversight) agents installed on computers that help to provide complete visibility. They help to improve the office metrics and employee productivity and consequently the efficiency of the organization.

What Does Employee Monitoring Software Packages Do

In addition to the simple function of tracking time by recording clock-ins and clock-outs or managing employee schedules, the modern employee monitoring software packages are more extensive and possess monitoring functions such as logging in keystrokes, track the locations, and take screenshots.

The software can be customized according to different employee groups so as to suit their functions.

The data that is generated can be aggregated and interpreted as reports and dashboards and help to distinguish between productive and unproductive employees. In the rest of the article, we are going to discuss some of the most popular software tools that are used in corporate organizations to improve employee productivity.

1. Time Doctor

This is a time management tool that allows for real-time tracking of various jobs and works to prevent waste of time. It is best used by those organizations or individuals that want to remotely track a team’s work time. It helps to assess the productivity of the team as well as its time management.

Some of the metrics that are measured include Internet use time of the employee, a list of the websites that were visited, and the applications that were used.

Time Doctor is programmed to take screenshots once in every three minutes to ensure that employees are continuing to do their work. There are other features such as setting priorities for tasks and removing multitasking options.

2. BaseCamp

BaseCamp allows the employees to add tasks as they are scheduled for the coming week, month or even on a day-to-day basis. The tasks can be ticked off as soon as they are completed.

It gives a chance for the management as to how much an employee has been able to get through with their marked tasks without any direct intervention. The employees need to be taken into task only when they do too little work in a day.

3. WorkZone

Touted as an alternative solution to Microsoft Project, this software tool allows managers to define task/subtasks in a way that they understand. However, at the level of the employees, these tasks are broken down into smaller jobs that they would understand.

Sharing documents and framing comments are possible. In addition to all of these, one can feed in personal projects which allow him/her to collaborate with their managers.

4. WorkiQ

WorkiQ is built to study an employee’s computer behaviour and generates reports about how much time has been spent on non-productive sites as compared to productive work done.

Their dashboards are designed to display at a glance as to which of the employees are involved in work and which others are distracted from their work.

It is also possible to categorize activities across different applications and gives options to compare how the different workers handle the same type of work.

This helps to acknowledge and reward productive work and spot unproductive work when it occurs. True productivity can be measured even when it is a mix of complex tasks.

5. DeskTime

DeskTime is an application that allows for tracking jobs in real time and classifying each task as being productive or otherwise. In turn, this leads to finding out just how much productive each employee is. Agencies can also track billable hours among the employees.

6. 15Five

15Five is a web tool that helps the manager to link with all of their employees even at times when they are very busy. The software package works towards developing the employees so as to drive the business forward.

The package is designed so that all the employees are aligned to work towards the company’s top priorities.it helps to spot top-performing employees and acknowledge their good work.

The feedback is a lightweight affair (15 minutes a week) that helps the employee to focus on self-development as well as improve the team’s morale. Managers are allowed to pass comments as responses so that they create improved business results by removing roadblocks and coaching the employees.

7. SaneBox

Replying to emails is an activity known to be a time waster in most businesses. Reading and replying to emails as soon as they arrive at work is a common practice.

Many messages are irrelevant and redundant. Employees that batch up their emails and read them at one point in time are found to be more productive in their work. However, this may not be possible every single time. SaneBox can step in here to help.

SaneBox is more than just a spam filter in that it learns from a user’s previous email behaviour. SaneBox automatically filters emails according to what you tend to open first and what you tend to keep away for later.

The latter type is stored away in a separate folder and a summary of each of these messages is displayed to you. The software package has provisions for users to unsubscribe themselves from sites with just a single click.

8. Trello

Trello is a clear work organizer package. The software is cloud-based and helps to organize small and big tasks. It allows the teams to move in synchronization and works much like a project management software program. Processes and functions as and when they are started can be easily accommodated in Trello.

Many a time this does away with the need for unnecessary emails to fly across and is a definite time saver. The package is robust and enthusiasts can try out a free version.

9. Salesforce

Salesforce is a cloud-based site and is specifically suited to those organizations dealing in sales and CRM. A sales manager can run up as to how many calls were made by his team in a day, how many emails were despatched, how many opportunities were handled and how much income was generated.

These metrics help to generate several relevant reports, automatically and is a great time saver. Similarly, customer data can be viewed optimally that ultimately helps to get more new clients and service the existing clients in a better manner. The Community Cloud aspect of Salesforce helps to redefine employee engagement with a view to improving productivity.

10. Todoist

Todoist helps an individual to follow up with every task that we need to accomplish on a day-to-day basis. Team tasks can also be planned and executed using Todoist. Deadlines can be input and productivity can be gauged with the help of the tasks that are completed on time.

The best part about Todoist is that it can be used on any platform. As the software package is cloud-based, you can access it using any device and you can practically monitor your workforce just about from anywhere.

11. Assembla

If your aim is to keep your entire team in constant communication, and want to know the latest of the workload, then Assembla is the right tool. Assembla helps you to enjoy repositories from just anywhere as it is cloud-based.

Project managers can work without intervening in the work of the development team as all the metrics are available anywhere. Moreover, it means less time on emails and improved productivity.

12. HipChat

HipChat boils down to an ‘instant messenger’ type of application at the workplace. It enables instant one-to-one communication. This time tracking and management tool provides a complete chat history.

Any employee that missed out on important meetings or communication can catch up using the history without actually having to disturb anyone.

This becomes a tool to measure employees’ performance on a daily basis and also decide as to what strategies would work to improve productivity. Productive and unproductive groups can be segregated and some of them can be driven to better their own performances to improve total productivity.

13. Asana

Asana is a time-tracking software package that ultimately helps to control the expense budget. The Harvest Timer is a notable option in the package that comes with integrating Asana with Harvest, the time-tracking software. It enables an individual to determine the amount of time that is spent on every single task in a day.

Tasks can be assigned to individuals and thereafter tracked. All the project members can be kept in the loop. All issues surface immediately and can be corrected without any loss of time. This helps to complete the projects on time and stay within the budget. Above all, it keeps clients and the employees happy.

14. Google Streak

Everyone knows of applications that work to control big projects so as to finish them on time. However, the smaller jobs of a mega project almost always never make any entry into any app. Many of them are tracked only through emails.

In such a case, Streak helps to track emails and solve the unresolved jobs that come through them. Reminders for such emails are marked and follow-up is set up collaborators. This application helps one to see all the jobs through, both big and small.

15. Pipedrive

Pipedrive is an application that helps to monitor the performance of those working in sales organizations. The advantage of the app is that it is easily customizable and the data reporting function is extremely robust. This facility generates many metrics for employees as well as the management and these can be used to improve the productivity.

Final Thoughts

As many as 15 tools that help to improve business productivity have been introduced. However, it is crucial to understand that a tool by itself is not responsible for increasing the productivity of an organization.

The culture of productivity has to be instilled into the employees by making use of the right type of incentives and making them aware of the moral responsibility. Employee monitoring tools cannot be draconian tools that drain the morale of the workforce.