Remote access to work pc's

Chobra

I am looking for free software to get access to my employyes pc's at work, it is hard to supervise their actions at all times but being able to see what they are doing from my computer will give me a fair idea if they are skiving or getting on with their work.

Thanks in advance

JonnyThunder

Im not sure about free tools to do this, but you can download a trial of Dameware to do the job. It can also do this in a 'stealthy' way so that the client PC doesn't show that you're connected.

Be warned however, that cases have been made regarding privacy - regardless of who owns the PC. If you're spying on people, you may be opening yourself up for legal action. Im not 100% on this however.

Idiophreak

Yeah, I'd be very careful here...You need to try and find out what the law says you're allowed to do in this respect.

At least, I'd expect you'd need to get all your employees to sign some sort of formal IT policy acknowledging that they understand you might spy on them.

tweeter

Hopefully you fail because from the tone of your post you must run a miserable tight ship by wanting to spy on people.

opportunity_cost

Here's some info as to what the law says:

Email and CCTV monitoring
Employee monitoring

Chobra, I think you should rethink your approach to employee monitoring. You're approaching the matter from the wrong angle, IMMO. Forget the legality of what you propose to do for a minute.

I don't think such intrusive and secretive system would be conducive to productivity. The likely outcome of such system is:

You confront x employee using whatever excuse after 2 hours solid of watching every click of their mouse --> you lose your rag with him/her and inevitably bring up some of your findings: 'you were shopping online at 9.45!' --> the cat is out of the bag: they find out you've been spying on them --> you loose the trust of your entire workforce --> their heart is not in it --> productivity goes downhill

The issue you're trying to deal with goes beyond the wanting to make sure your employees are getting on with their work. It really is about the relationship you have with your employees, trust (both ways) and finding the right balance so that they work hard for you AND so that they're happy working for you.

You have every right to expect your employees to do what they're paid to do but, at the same time, you should be flexible enough with them. I dislike skiving as much as you do, but if an employee of mine was doing a good job and getting the results for the company, I wouldn't mind if they did a bit of surfing at work. I'd much rather have them happy and being productive than unhappy, unproductive and cursing me and the company while at their desk. If an employee can't get you the results in the first place, get rid of them, by all means.

superscaper

Makes me think about companies like 3M which has a 15% rule. Employees (especially in research) should spend up to about 15% of their time doing their own stuff/projects etc. I think the post-it note was one of the things that came from the 15% personal projects.

neilwoods

yeah doesnt sound like a nice person to work for, and a bit of a skint flint to boot.

Here is one idea, why not stop skiving yourself and go to the workplace and do some work yourself. Lead by example, not by do what i say or your fired.

superscaper

I think your best method of monitoring is simply setting targets and goals and seeing whether your employees are meeting them by set deadlines. Constant "real time" monitoring would be counter productive.

nomoneytoday

Surely its more important to deliver to targets and ensure client satisfaction, rather than worry about what an individual is doing at 10.24am on a Tuesday morning...

jamalfatty

I'm assuming by skiving you mean surfing the net? Dont agree with what your trying to achieve, but if you have a semi-decent IT setup then surely there would be logs of who visited what site and at what time?