Freelance and Mining

Every employer at least once faced misuse of the company's resources by employees, from using the office printer for personal purposes to stealing stationery. Our today's case is one of such: the employees were not only using their office computers for mining but also their work time for outside projects.

A large design agency from Taiwan was concerned about the recent drop in revenues and was looking for the root of the problem. We suggested they start monitoring their staff with CleverControl and see if unproductivity is the core detrimental factor. After evaluating the functionality of our system and attending a demo, the CEO approved CleverControl for implementation in the office.

Only a week of monitoring already gave its first results. The team used Line for in-office work communications. The statistics showed that four designers were significantly more active on the messenger than the rest of the team. Those designers had also been less productive than their colleagues in the past few months. They often missed deadlines, and the quality of their work was not very satisfactory. The manager suspected they were simply wasting time on non-work conversations and enabled additional screenshots for the chat to confirm that guess. At the same time, the manager glimpsed unfamiliar design projects in screenshots from those employees' computers which also raised suspicions.

The following week of monitoring gave proof of a serious violation. The four designers were working on freelance projects for competitors during the work day, and naturally, they did not have time for their direct responsibilities. Screenshots of their Line conversations with their commissioners and freelance projects were solid proof of the violation. The CEO made a hard decision to fire the employees, although they were the most experienced and talented designers in the office.

Further monitoring with CleverControl also revealed another surprising problem. Logs of installed programs and program activity showed that some employees were using their office computers for mining. The CEO had to fire six more employees for that violation.

Knowing they are under monitoring, the rest of the team self-regulated their productivity and in-office behaviour. Gradually, the agency managed to regain its previous revenue level and even surpass it.

CleverControl has become a part of the management processes in the agency, helping to access the employees' involvement, detect bottlenecks and prevent possible violations.

• User Activity

  The summary of the users' activity allowed detection of extensive usage of the messenger and suggested their unproductivity.
• IM monitoring

  Monitoring of Line messenger provided evidence that the employees worked on non-work related projects in their work time.
• Programs Activity

  Programs monitoring helped to detect mining programs on office computers.