subject: Using Remote Desktop Access As A Tool For Employee Monitoring [print this page] Using Remote Desktop Access As A Tool For Employee Monitoring
Let's face it: one of the things that most employers yearn for is a way of monitoring their employee activity at work. It is not just out of idle curiosity that they do so. And it not just out of a desire to intrude on their employees' privacy that many of them do so. On the contrary, many employers tend to give some quite compelling reasons for wanting to know what their employees are doing on their work computers. Many employers will, for instance, give an argument to the effect that they want to ensure that their employees are being productive at work, and to prevent their employees from stealing' their time. This is quite a strong argument, when you come to think of it. After all, most employers pay their employees on the basis of the time they work for them. Yet many employees, in spite of their having been paid on account of their hours, will still try to find ways of using those hours for non work-related activities. Isn't it only fair that employers would want to find ways of curtailing this?
Yet someone will raise an argument to the effect that a better way to ensure employee productivity in the office is by working out better motivational systems. It is an equally reasonable argument. But a more compelling reason for employers wanting to monitor employee activity, especially on their work computers, would be to prevent online transmission of confidential information, and the possible intrusion of corporate computer systems through reckless employee activities online. There are many who don't sympathize with the desire to ensure employee productive as a strong enough reason to justify monitoring employee computing activity. But many would agree with the latter arguments given, about the possibility of confidential information being breached online (which is very easy to do even for a dimwit), and the possibility of corporate computer systems being compromised through reckless online activity.
Now as it turns out, there are several tools available for monitoring employee computing activity, once compelling reasons for undertaking it have been established. One example of those tools is that of the increasingly popular remote desktop access software. Most of these remote desktop access programs are cheaply available, and there are even some of them that are free of charge. The programs work within a network which could be a local area network or even a wide area network (over the Internet). The person with admin rights gets the opportunity to see what is happening on each computer in the system at any given point in time. This makes room for full-time surveillance, and some of the software can even be configured to alert the person doing the surveillance whenever a particular type of activity starts taking place on any of the workstations under their watch.
Ultimately, these remote desktop access programs can come in handy for employee monitoring purposes. But it is important to inform employees whenever this kind of surveillance is being carried out on them. Just the simple act of telling them that such software has been installed is likely to serve as a deterrent- which can help avert many ugly incidents that are likely to come up if the surveillance is carried out quietly. It also becomes necessary to not only tell them that they are being monitored through remote desktop access programs, but also to counsel them on why it has become to carry out the surveillance. That way, they don't end up with the feeling that you don't trust them which would be a sure morale killer in the workplace.
