Thread: Spying on a PC

Originally Posted by FailSafe

How much are you willing to pay for the two hours everyday that I spend on Facebook during company time if I work for you?

if you can get your work completed and have 2 hours for facebook - why should I care ?

Originally Posted by FailSafe

So employees don't owe me work for the time I'm paying them to do their jobs? Who says it's a 'small sum of money'

logically you must be paying them less money than they make for the company

Originally Posted by FailSafe

Originally Posted by baldrick

Originally Posted by FailSafe

How much are you willing to pay for the two hours everyday that I spend on Facebook during company time if I work for you?

if you can get your work completed and have 2 hours for facebook - why should I care ?

Originally Posted by FailSafe

So employees don't owe me work for the time I'm paying them to do their jobs? Who says it's a 'small sum of money'

logically you must be paying them less money than they make for the company

Completed? In a company the work is ongoing- you are being paid to work a certain amount of hours- if your work is done, why not punch out for the day rather than hang on to be paid for nothing? If you were paying for the time you would care. You're also under the assumption that these time-wasters are efficient people who get a lot done in a short time- that's unlikely.

I don't see how your point regarding compensation being an issue is 'logical' in a way that is germane to this topic- you took a job at a certain pay rate- if you're not willing to work for the money you agreed upon, quit, but don't expect to be compensated for time you waste. Obviously most companies work for profit- the fact the company (hopefully) makes money on an employee's time is a given, regardless of the amount they are paid.

If you are being paid "by the hour", then you're probably in manufacturing, where production targets are easily measurable, or a temp.

For everyone else you are being paid to do a job. It isn't difficult to apply metrics to that, without having to resort to spying on people.

Obviously it depends on the type of company and the position- it can certainly be difficult to identify the time-wasters in a large department- to make it sound like these people who spend as much of the day surfing the net as possible are actually effectively doing their jobs is ridiculous.

Again, why is every company aspect subject to scrutiny except for company computers, which are somehow deemed exempt?

^ They aren't deemed exempt, your IT department normally knows what's going on (or it should do).

If it's a smaller company, it should be a piece of piss to spot the skivers a fucking mile off without resorting to this nasty, insidious behavour.

You certainly won't get any respect from your employees if you treat all of them in such a vile way.

^

I agree that IT should know what's going on and report any excessive Internet use to the boss- my assumption re: the OP was that there was no IT department in place (which a smaller company probably wouldn't have).

It's not as easy to spot the slackers in a group of eight or ten as you might think.

If there's no IT department, does the boss still have the right to know how the computers he owns are being used? Again, I don't like the idea of 'spying' but I'm ok with employees knowing that their company computer access might be monitored.

^ Yes. In most companies they're called "managers".

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

If your employees aren't doing their jobs, and you don't know it without spying on their computers, then you're a shit manager.

Yep, you got that one 100% correct Harold!

I recommend CCTV in the toilets

We have an RFID clocking in system with turnstiles etc., as much for security as anything else. I was once called to a meeting where I was asked by the boss to promise I wouldn't laugh!

We have buses that run around various company locations, and it turned out some prick in HR wanted to put the clocking in system on the buses "to make sure people aren't avoiding work by riding around on them".

When I'd finished laughing, I asked him what employees usually do for a bit of a skive. No answer.

Wander off and have a chat with a colleague.
Go and have a cuppa.
Nip to the bog with the newspaper.

A little Toc H light bulb lit up and off he went with his tail between his legs.

Fucking idiots, always trying to manage problems that don't exist.

Your employees have a job and there are better ways to measure if they are being productive than spying on them, simple as.

Back when I had to work for a living I worked in the telecommunications and fibre optics division. I ran 5 teams of installation engineers that worked throughout the UK and Europe. All the guys spent the week, sometimes two away from home every night. I was often asked to work to very tight deadlines. Often the client manager would ask if I could have the job installed by a certain date. My reply was always as long as you are prepared to pay the engineers to work the weekend then it shouldn't be a problem.
So Monday morning rocks up and I gather the guys together. I explain the situation and tell then I need it installed and ready for testing by next Monday coming. If they can do that they will get paid for the weekend. So they have a target but instead of pissing it off all day and taking their time they had an option. They can work their little butts off and instead of clocking off at 4pm and heading to the hotel bar to drink away their overnight allowance they would stop there onsite till 10-11pm. Come Friday late they are all done and dusted and are all off home.
Now come Monday everyone should be happy. The manager of the switch centre has his equipment installed as I promised him it would be, the company I work for has been paid the money they charge to have engineers work at the weekend which is a shit load more than they actually give the guys and I got some well earned Brownie points.
But every now and then you get a manager above who is a right wanker and fails to see everyone is a winner. I get a call on Monday to say that the guys didn't work the weekend and were actually at home so he isn't going to pay them the overtime WTF !!
His reasoning is if the guys didn't work why should they be paid.
The guy is a dick wipe. So he doesn't pay the guys as I promised.
Come the next contract when things are a little behind and he asks the guys to help him out you can guess the answer.
The dick wipe in question ended up getting fired for losing too many contracts and I ended up with his job, company car and company credit card. All the people below me knew me by reputation and for me as long as they did the work I asked them to do, and having risen through the ranks I fully understood what was taking the piss, they got their little freebies. Case in point. I know the equipment has been delayed and wont be on site till Tuesday. A call to the engineer going to the job to let him know that he can stay home Monday but get there for the Tuesday gives him an extra day off with the family and I get some respect.
The thing was if ever I needed the guys to do a job super quick, stay abroad another few weeks even though the missus was giving them grief, work over Xmas etc they did it.
You sometimes have to balance being a tight fisted hard Scrooge with someone who gives a little but won't be taken the piss out of !
As said sometimes it pays to give a little
The staff I have in Thailand all know where the limit of taking the piss is and that for me here is the hard part !

^
Didn't your company offer overtime pay for working more than an eight-hour day? It seems that the workers would have been entitled to 6-7 hours OT per day if they were working until after 10pm when they usually clocked off at 4pm. If they received OT than not paying them for the weekend was fair- if they didn't than the company was in the wrong.

I think his point went flying straight over your head.

Originally Posted by FailSafe

I don't think knowing how company property is being used is 'spying'.

That would be like knowing some cnut is looking over your shoulder every second of everyday but not being able to see them, sounds like the guy off the Milk Tray advert to me

Originally Posted by FailSafe

fair work for fair wages

Originally Posted by FailSafe

why are all other aspects of a company subject to scrutiny

What you are doing is the equivalent of looking over the shithouse door.
It's all about mutual respect. I wonder how many sick days these companies who use that spyware lose from their workforce per year through stress

Originally Posted by FailSafe

It's not as easy to spot the slackers in a group of eight or ten as you might think.

Of course it is, unless you have your head up your own arse or are too busy playing Farmville on facebook yourself .
The workplace is full of brown nosers and tossers who will soon dob you in if they are doing most of the work and someones not pulling their weight.

There's always some arsehole in the company who has the nickname Boots or Toenails, because that's all you can see hanging out of the bosses butt cheeks

Why is it like 'looking over the shithouse door'? If the computer is company-owned, what private/intimate stuff are you viewing?

Right- all you need to do is rely on their co-workers to turn in slackers- that's a great idea...

'Days lost to stress' due to your work being supervised- what a load of crap.

Originally Posted by FailSafe

expecting fair work for fair wages (and trying to make sure people are working instead of goofing off) isn't the same as treating workers with the proper repect.

No it isn't, when you start spying on your own staff like the gestapo.

Respect is a two way street.

Added: I wrote our company's Internet Acceptable Usage Policy and I made damned sure there was a clause in there permitting limited personal use of both email and the web.

Keeps people happy, and they don't get all shitty with us if a website gets blocked or an email accidentally gets spammed, for example.

They know at lunchtime or after work they can surf and email away and won't have anyone looking over their shoulders.

The ones that don't do any work can be spotted by the fact that, well, their work isn't getting fucking done. They can only come up with so many excuses.

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

Originally Posted by FailSafe

expecting fair work for fair wages (and trying to make sure people are working instead of goofing off) isn't the same as treating workers with the proper repect.

No it isn't, when you start spying on your own staff like the gestapo.

Respect is a two way street.

Making sure the people you're paying to work are actually working and not on Facebook isn't exactly acting like the Gestapo- no one is looking at your personal computer or property, and if you're an employee you have to expect your work to be supervised- this thread is getting a bit hysterical.

If there's a system in place to limit personal activity during work hours, then that's fine, and who cares what they do during their personal time- that's the time that is none of the company's business.

OMG!

My boss ... like ... expects me to WORK while I'm at work!

What a Nazi asshole!

The bottom line is that the internet is a tremendous distraction, and it's usually more interesting than the daily grind of work (not for everyone, of course)- it's the biggest single time-stealer of working hours- if I'm a boss I want to know that those wasted hours are minimized, and if I don't have the resources or need for a separate IT department, I want to be able to see a screen-shot of the computers I own while they're being used during the time I'm paying people to use them (or I want to have some other sort of limiting system in place)- I don't want to know anyone's personal information, but I don't want them playing online poker on my dime either.

And how many people do you have working for you, Failsafe?

Originally Posted by FailSafe

Why is it like 'looking over the shithouse door'? If the computer is company-owned, what private/intimate stuff are you viewing?

Originally Posted by FailSafe

I don't want to know anyone's personal information

What do you think these programs actually do ?

Originally Posted by Patrick

Computer and Internet Monitoring Software | SpectorSoft

^^

Only a few that use a computer for their jobs, but certainly not enough to justify an IT department.

What's the difference? I still want to know that my employees are working during the time I'm paying them for, and that wouldn't change regardless of the number.