Keeping employees honest using monitoring software – An employer advice

A remote web developer at Coalition Technologies happened to spend a lot of his time watching movies on his work computer; little did he know that the company’s software was watching his moves. Coalition is an online marketing and design firm which makes use of ActivTrak which is a software to monitor their employees’ use of the internet on company owned computers. This company is amongst the many that are now beginning to make use of monitoring software’s to monitor the internet activity of their employees

The software gave Coalition a report about the computer use of the web developer in question and also revealed the reason behind why his latest projects which had been submitted, had been late. The employee who was aware of the monitoring software being in place was later fired from his job due to his inability to improve upon his performance.

Considering such an example, employers perhaps do have a good reason to be monitoring their employees and making use of a web monitoring software. A survey conducted in 2014 by Salary.com showed that 42% out of 750 respondents stated that the activity which wasted their time most at work was doing things online. 26% of them said browsing the internet, 12% stated responding to emails and 4% stated that social media is what caused them to waste their time at work.

In yet another 2014 survey which was conducted by the Human Capital Institute, it was found that 65% of companies now have a policy for blocking sites at work and 60% of them said that it had been an effective measure to take as it helped in getting rid of any workplace distractions.

Despite the use of such employee monitoring software increases performance, the topic does raise concerns for those who are advocates of civil liberty at the workplace. According to the president of National Work-rights Institute, Lewis Maltby, internet monitoring has now become a trend which is growing and software’s for this purpose are being made use of by a number of employers. He also states that it could be a major setback in terms of the privacy of employees since a lot of times; workplace computers are also made use of for personal searches which may be associated with illness, disease or problems with children or one’s marriage.

Coalition Technologies makes use of ActivTrak to see the screen shots of activities on computers which are used by around 30 of its employees out of a total of 73. All that is required is that a manager selects a date, clicks on “go” and the software will show him every screen shot of the computer used by an employee for that particular date. Thus the software is pretty useful and can even provide the list of websites which an employee visited and for how long he was on the site. This is possible since the software runs in the background while the computer continues to operate and is in no way, intrusive. What businesses should keep in mind however is that soon enough, it will be difficult for them to find employees who don’t mind being micromanaged at all times.   

Pupils’ internet activity being monitored through anti-radicalization software

Schools are now being sold software’s to be able to monitor the internet activity of their students to look for language which may be related to extremism. A number of companies have now begun to produce anti-radicalization software so that the internet activity of pupils can be kept a check on. This has begun as part of a legal requirement on schools to look into issues of extremism and terrorism amongst the children who study in the schools.

Part of the Counter terrorism and Security Act of 2015 which was to come into effect on the 1st of July states that schools now have a requirement to have due regard for the needs of  the students and to prevent them from being pulled into terrorism.

Impero is one such company which has launched its pilot software in 16 various locations in the UK along with 5 in the US. The software produced by them allows teachers to be able to take screen shots of anything which the software flags as a cause of concern. A glossary of terms and words which trigger such a red flag has also been created by Impero and words within the glossary consist of “jihobbyist”- someone who shows sympathy towards a jihadi organization but isn’t actively part of it or “Message to America” which is an Islamic State series of videos regarding their propaganda and many others.

Those schools which have already begun to make use of the pilot software of Impero do have contracts to either buy or rent out other kinds of software from the same company and are being given the option of trying out the anti-radicalization software free of charge.

According to a spokesperson for Impero, the latest Security Act has placed a duty on schools to prevent students from being drawn into terrorism and with the introduction of the act, Impero has been approached a great deal by a number of schools who have requested a keyword detection policy to be designed which focuses greatly on radicalization.

The system is the kind which helps teachers identify and confirm children who may be in a vulnerable state and can even help to identify those who may be at a risk for being vulnerable in the future. It also gives teachers as well as child protection officers the ability to intervene and to support a child if required and to do so in a timely and proper manner.

The idea is not to criminalize children but it is simply to help schools in spotting any early warning signs which could prevent the heightening of risk which could then be assessed and measured in a timely manner and the children could be educated prior to becoming a victim of radicalization. Various schools however are interpreting the clause in the Security Act differently with some stating that it is difficult for schools to get involved in the matter. Other schools are simply stating that they are aware that they should take the issue into consideration whereas others seem to be more proactive about it. Thus, every school is seen to be interpreting the news and latest Security Act in a different manner.