Best Way to Monitor Employees Working Frome Home?

What is the best way to monitors employees working from home. I know there is software out there, but trying to get some input here?

 

If you supply them with a company computer to use for business purposes only, you have a wide selection of choices available to you. If the information they are handling is sensitive, you may want them to connect to your servers through an encrypted VPN as well, which would give you the ability to apply a normal filter on the server they route through.

I can't provide names of software or the sort, but It's at least a direction to head in depending on the set up you're using now.

 

You don't know of any software that we can use?

 

I actually work more in getting around filters and monitoring services than work with putting them into place

As long as you're providing employees with the computers they are to use from home, you have the ability to install some sort of keylogging software or the sort. Though I really do think a VPN solution would be best. Basically you would force your employees to direct all traffic flow through your servers to be monitored using a sniffer or filtered with basic filtering before going on to the rest of the web. Since the VPN would be encrypted, you wouldn't need to worry about employees using wifi from a local cafe or the sort either.

To be honest a few quick Google searches for corporate grade monitoring software would probably be a lot more helpful than I can be.

 

You could use something like LogMeIn if they agree to it. Probably the safest route is to assign some work and pretend you're working on it. How long would it take you? Give that person the same amount of time and then some. Obviously adjust as you put this into practice but if you notice that your employee can never make deadlines then you should drop them. This is how real world jobs work and deadlines are deadlines. Good luck!

 

http://www.teamviewer.com/index.aspx might be a good option

 

Google Docs! You can get connected to the people from anywhere with other Google Apps!

 

OK, maybe I am just being paranoid now, but how does Google Docs allow you to actually "monitor" employees?

 

The best way to monitor them. Only pay for results that will get there attention

 

ActualSpy will log every keystroke they make, and you can password protect it to review it latter or get it uploaded on an FTP server.

TeamViewer for screen capturing

 

You can use VNC. A warning though, your employees would HATE the idea which most probably make them unhappy. I suggest tonnele's method as well.

 

Monitor employees by giving them recognition for a job well done. Not everyone agrees with your micro-management methods, such as keystroke loggers and screenshots every few minutes or remote control of the employee's desktop. Give them a little bit of creative freedom to encourage and empower them to become productive. I like the idea of setting deadlines. Reward good behavior.

Can you provide us with some examples of your work from home policies? Curious to know what expectations (if any) you've set for your employees. It's hard to enforce work policies that do not exist.

 

As for me, I prefer to use ActyMac DutyWatch. DutyWatch is a computer monitoring and recording program that is capable of capturing every program used, every website visited, every keystroke made, even every instant message chat.
http://www.actymac.com/dutywatch

 

I cant personally code you a keylogger and a screen monitor, everything they do will be visible to you, and you only it will be encrypted for security.
PM me.

 

you can use logmein. it is cheap and best.hope it helps

 

There are free or premium systems you can use - but having "been there" I would recommend that instead of monitoring your outsourced staff, you simply make it clear what is expected of them.

You need to treat your outsourced team like adults & with trust - make it clear what's expected in term oc work volume & the quality of work, and as long as this is being acheived why spend time trying to monitor them?

It's the same if you employ staff - the same people who would spend time & energy on monitoring are the same people who would end up micro managing staff if they were on site. What's the point of micro managing & monitoring? If you're going to spend that much time & effort doing that, you may as well just do it yourself

Just my opinion anyway - sure, you can't let people take advantage, but I would far prefer to just make it clear what is expected, and focus on the results - than mess around trying to monitor them.

 

What you can do to monitor them will depend on what they are supposed to be doing for you. If they;re doing data input its much easier to monitor them by how many orders they complete etc than trying to use anything else.

Virtualisation and thin clients is the way a lot go who want more control and works well if your somewhere where everyone has good broadband connections and you can afford the decent enough server to host the virtual PCs and have them run at a reasonable speed.

 

You can use WorkTime to monitor working from home employees

 

Make them tweet progress reports every 108 minutes.

 

I agree with Valentina_SK ActyMac DutyWatch is really good app.And now it has extended version it's called ActyMac Dutywatch Remote.It's work fine with iPad or iPhone.