Monitoring software: A productivity booster?

If you deploy monitoring software in your company, will it undermine employee morale? Or will it simply deter your staff from wasting countless hours of company time a day surfing the Internet for personal rather than business-related use? According to Doug Fowler, president of SpectorSoft Corporation, it seems that all the uproar about monitoring software and images of the boss spying over your shoulder is much ado about nothing. As chief executive of the Vero Beach, Florida-based surveillance software company, he finds that it's more of a perception issue than a reality.

"We hear the resistance up front from potential customers," says Fowler. "They're concerned that management is going to come across too much like Big Brother." But of the hundreds of thousands of installations of the company's monitoring products, he can't recall a single company that has said their employees were up in arms about the installation of the software and demanding its removal. "When employees are told up front that the software is being deployed, it doesn't become that big a deal," he asserts.

Lost productivity driving the spread of surveillance software
Though headlines scream about corporate espionage and embezzlement and even attempts at disseminating pornography in the workplace, Fowler claims those are more fringe reasons for deploying software that records computer activity. In his experience, the majority of companies are simply concerned about employee productivity. "People who buy monitoring software are concerned about the amount of time their employees are spending doing personal things on the Internet and not work-related things," he shares. The monitoring software helps them understand just how much time is being frittered away and provides the necessary documentation to address the problem with their employees."

A lot of studies have shown that employees average from five to 10 hours a week on the Internet, says Fowler. And a vast majority of that is for personal usage, such as receiving and sending personal email, trading stocks, buying things on eBay, or reviewing last night's game on a sport Web site. Companies want to regain that lost productivity so they can be more competitive.

Fowler notes that the second most popular reason for deploying the software is compliance. In those companies impacted by regulatory issues, the monitoring software enables them to create a record of employee communication with customers and business partners that could prove or disprove liability.

Choosing between monitoring, filtering, and detailed surveillance
There are a number of solutions on the market today that fall into the category of monitoring and surveillance software. Companies such as Websense, N2H2, and SurfControl offer enterprise solutions that filter e-communication, and block and record user visits to Web sites. They run at the server where they can centrally control Internet access over the network.

Products such as SpectorSoft CNE sit at the PC level and are used primarily to document employee PC and Internet activity rather than filter or block access to particular Web destinations. "Software that simply records Web sites that employees visit is skimming the surface," claims Fowler. "Just because somebody visits a Web site or their computer sits at a Web site for an hour doesn't mean that the employee was actively using that Web site for an hour. He or she might have inadvertently ended up at a Web site and then been called away to a meeting, leaving the PC sitting on that site for two hours."