Improving employee
productivity
The internet can be a big employee time waster. About
once or twice a month I get a call from a business owner asking how they can
either monitor their employee’s computer usage or prevent them from wasting
time on various web sites. Monitoring and content filtering software are
available to do this, but using these solutions should be weighed against your
corporate culture. The costs and benefits of monitoring and managing
internet access can be huge, but the problem can also be managed using a human
approach, by doing a combination of coaching and leading. I call content
management software the Big Brother approach after the quote “Big brother is
watching you” from George Orwell’s book 1984. Many small business owners
like the idea of being able to view their employee’s desktop, but it can lead
to employee resentment and lost productivity when implemented without their
buy-in. An alternative is the “Big Sister” approach, which means creating
a culture of trust by sitting down with employees and educating them about the
conditions or time frames they’re free to use the internet for personal
things. The big sister approach can work well for small groups of
professionals. Either way, you should also have a written “acceptable use
policy” to cover inappropriate computer use for things like porn and sending
jokes that are sexist, racist or could be misinterpreted. The big brother
approach is often needed for schools, large organizations, or those subject to
regulatory restrictions like HIPAA. Big brother is also needed for anyone
with a serious need to protect corporate assets.
One of the solutions we use when employee monitoring is
needed is Spector 360, a software package that is purchased for about $115 “per
seat”. Multiply this by the number of employees, and figure about an hour
of labor per workstation to get the software set up and you’ll have a good idea
of the cost. The software can be installed in stealth mode, providing
complete transparency to the user, who is unaware that is on his machine. This
is legal given the machines are owned by the business, but we recommend having
employees sign an acceptable use document that states that monitoring may be
done. This investment will pay for itself by allowing the manager to centrally
monitor and even manage computer use from his desk. Regular or periodic
screen shots can be taken of the employee’s screens, allowing for a security
camera Digital Video Recorder (DVR) type playback. Logs can be created and
reports produced to answer questions like which employees spend the most time
surfing web sites, which is spending time on what sites, who uses chat or
anonymous email, and much more. Other, less expensive packages are also
available to install on “problem” machines on a case by case basis. Tools
like this can significantly increase productivity, allow investigation into
violations of acceptable use policies, and protect against data theft (studies
show 1 in 5 employees will print or copy company data in the days leading up to
their resignation). In one High School the software was configured
to create and email reports automatically any time inappropriate words were
used. This included, for example, swear words inside .doc files or in any
software on 700 desktops across the school. Administrators were able to
discipline students and word got around, greatly reducing problems.
Content filtering is another class of productivity
tool. Filters will limit access to websites to those needed for
business. We often implement this using a SonicWall router but many other
products are available depending on the needs of the client. The content
filter allows us to either create a whitelist of sites that are OK to use, or
blacklist specific sites that aren’t. While effective, this technique sometimes
produces employee frustration when they have previously had free access.
In some cases a new site is needed for legitimate business use and yet can’t be
accessed until someone with the password has added it to the white
list. The difficulties associated with aggressive filtering came to
light when I implemented it in my own house to protect our children. My
teenage daughter came to me complaining that she couldn’t access her favorite
swimsuit shopping site. This shopping site was lumped into one of the unacceptable
use categories, probably because of the pictures of scantily clad swimsuit
models. I found myself slowly white listing sites, and then unblocking
whole categories (ie shopping, photography etc). After 6 months of
frustration (for both me and the children) we ended up taking the “big sister”
approach with our kids. We basically said “OK if you go to bad places then
we’re shutting the whole thing down”. At least with the content filtering
I was able to put a schedule that automatically shut down Internet usage at
10pm each night. This helped reduce late nights of online gaming.
A third and incredibly important business productivity tool
we use is the spam filter. I’m constantly amazed at the number of small
business owners who suffer silently with hundreds of spam messages each
day. Multiply the number of minutes you spend reading and deleting spam
by how many employees you have and you realize that attempting to use the free
spam filters (that don’t work or integrate with outlook well) are not cost
effective. Like anti-virus software, no spam filter is perfect, but along
with regularly unsubscribing to unwanted newsletters, it can help control most
of the volume. Spam filters run about $2-$5 per person per month, but pay
for themselves quickly. The goal is to receive as little email as
possible without false positives (which means rejecting customer email that you
want to receive).
Each of these three productivity enhancement techniques
(Monitoring, website blocking, and spam filtering) can help control wasted
employee time. To the list we should probably add workstation backup,
anti-virus, and anti-spyware tools. The average virus slows a machine
down for weeks, causes 8-14 hours of actual down time, and costs another
4 hours for IT staff to fix. The hard cost of these tools are arguably
less than the soft costs associated with lost productivity. Just make
sure employees understand the reason for any changes in their access.
Darren McBride is CEO of Sierra Computer Group, a Reno
based IT and Network Consulting firm
