Track employee Internet usage, Why and how to track employee Internet usage?

You need to track employee Internet Usage because Internet while having the potential to significantly enhance employee productivity often has the opposite effect. Being connected to the Internet is necessary for normal functioning of business. Much business is connected over the Internet, through emails and on websites.

However the Internet while being essential is a huge drain on time. Workers spend time checking personal email, doing chores and on social networking sites.

Brad Friedman has this to say in his blog post

“57% of work interruptions involve either the use of social tools like email, social networks, and text messaging, or switching windows among disparate standalone tools and applications, as well as personal online activities such as Facebook and Internet searches. The remaining 43% of workplace distractions comes from activities like phone calls, talking with co-workers and ad hoc meetings.”

“45% of employees surveyed reported they work only 15 minutes or less without getting interrupted and 53% waste at least one hour each day due to all types of distractions. That hour per day translates into $10,375 of wasted productivity per person, per year, assuming an average salary of $30/hour. Doing the math we learn for businesses with 1,000 employees, the cost of employee interruptions exceeds $10 million per year.”

The other reason you want to track employee Internet usage and have an employee Internet policy is so that you are not held liable for your employees' illegal Internet activities.

How do we improve employee productivity while stopping Internet time waste?

A two pronged approach with an Acceptable Employee Internet Use policy together with measures to enforce large portions of the policy will help.

We have to realize is that the average good worker wants to be productive and it is just not that easy to get rid of distractions. Very few among us have, on our own, not been distracted while working on the Internet.

The challenge is how to enable access to information that the worker needs while helping the worker avoid distractions. The larger companies do this through both policies and specific measures in place.

According to surveys 68% reported their companies enforce policies and/or technologies to minimize distractions at work. Employees report employers block access to public social media, track usage patterns, provide training, provide enterprise collaboration windows, institute No Facebook Fridays, and have instituted No Email Fridays.

How to track employee Internet Usage?

Typically the larger organizations have devices costing tens of thousands of dollars and full time staff for the care and maintenance of the network.

They use devices such as those from Kerio or Barracuda.

If you are a small business or an individual you cannot afford the same expense. You need a cost effective way to track employee internet usage.

Our Odin Box provides the same capability to improve employee productivity small businesses and offices at a much lower price, while allowing for ease of use. The Odin Box can typically be set up and functional within 15 minutes by a non technical person who is proficient at computer.

If you or your technical person is proficient at installing software, another alternative is to install Untangle on a computer and use it as your filtering gateway.

An free, open source tool for time tracking is Time tracker . This will have to be deployed on each computer. However it will give you much more information by allowing you to track how much time is being spent by each employee on each computer application even if it is not related to the Internet.