In 2018, the best employee monitoring tool should be defined as the best for:-
1) The employee,
2) The managers
3) The company as a whole.
If it fails one of these it is not ‘The Best’. An example could be a spying type tool that the Manager uses and he thinks is good, but the employee
(who may not even know about it) would not be of the same opinion.
The best software that achieves all three of these is assisted by AI; this is why we we often mention the year (2018) as in previous years, the
best employee monitoring software did not use AI
Software that is not assisted by AI typically uses (as a substitute) :-
An ever-watch (spying?) eye - would working for a company that secretly uses approach make you feel a like a trusted employee? All the tools these programs use can be described as ‘unintelligent’.
The ‘all seeing eye’
might be in the form of an incognito agent installed on any managers, staff or employee computer; sometimes hidden in the ‘Running Processes’ list under a disguised name. It would see everything including the apps the employee
has open, whom they are chatting with and what they are saying. It would use keyword triggers to let admin know if they are doing something ‘admin might like to know about’
It will use screenshots and customised
employee screen recording. The screenshots may be taken at pre-set intervals e.g. every 10 seconds, 10 minutes, 1 hour etc.
Some tools give live screeshots or continuous video recording. These can also have metadata
associated with them, so e.g. if an employee posted a tweet a month ago, then a search will show the recording of this for other (authorised) people in the company to see. These timestamped searchable screen grabs or video
recording can be ‘pulled up’ and used as evidence against an employee if something is being investigated.
Every word that appears on a screen grab can be read using ‘optical character recognition’ and so is searchable.
Employees chatting (perhaps to another employee) using a secure instant messaging app can have their messages might be being scanned, stored and searchable.
If a company wants to know if any employees are
chatting about the CEO, then when his name appears in e.mails or any media e.g. instant messaging (even words in a photo), then a trigger will alert the company.
The Best Employee Monitoring tool is AI Employee
Monitoring Software 2018
If your company is primarily investing in an employee monitoring tool work with the employee to improve productivity and efficiency, then it must use AI.
Tools which don’t use AI
rely on full oversight into everything the employee does.
Please see AI Employee Monitoring Software Designed to Help Employees
and AI Management Monitoring Tool to improve staff and employee performance