Employee Screen Monitoring Software
Lawful Use Notice
CleverControl is intended only for lawful employee monitoring by organizations on company-owned or otherwise authorized devices. Customers must notify monitored employees in advance, obtain consent where required, and comply with all applicable laws. Covert surveillance, monitoring of personal devices without authorization, and any other unlawful use are prohibited.
What is screen monitoring?
Screen monitoring is one of the most conclusive and effective ways to track employees' activity and ensure that employees are their most productive selves during the day. This tracking method requires special software installed on the computers that one plans to oversee. Screen monitoring can be carried out in several ways: with screenshots, live streaming of the screen or screen recording.
How can screen monitoring be helpful?
The benefits of screen monitoring are hard to overestimate.
Screen monitoring can provide detailed reports of configured work-related activity, including actions that may not be captured by other tools, for example, file operations or mouse clicks.
The employer can see what the employee does at any moment of the day.
Live screen monitoring helps to detect unproductivity, suspicious behaviour and violations in real-time.
Using screen recording, you can rewatch any period of the workday as many times as you need.
Screenshots and screen recordings serve as solid evidence in cases of internal investigations.
Screen monitoring allows quick recap the workday.
Visual reports, such as screenshots and screen recordings, may be more evident and time-saving because our brain processes visual information easier and faster than text.
Screen monitoring software
The screenshot option is in the feature sets of most employee monitoring programs. However, CleverControl can do more than take snaps of the screen. Its monitoring capabilities also include live viewing and screen recording.
Live viewing is real-time streaming of the computer's screen. You can configure the quality of the stream and view it in full-screen mode. Live viewing also provides real-time log updates: URLs of the pages the user is viewing and texts they are typing or copying to the clipboard. If the employee uses two or more monitors, Live viewing allows you to see them all - you should switch the stream to the screen you wish to see.
Live viewing should be limited to legitimate business purposes, defined working hours, and authorized personnel according to the organization's monitoring policy and applicable law.
You can watch a live stream of the individual employee or switch to the Live panel, where you can see up to six employees' screens on one page. This feature makes routine checkups on productivity in teams and offices much more convenient and time-saving.
The employer or the manager may not always have time to watch live screen monitoring during the workday. Screen recording is designed exactly for such cases. The software records employees' screens during the workday, and these recordings are available to watch remotely via the online dashboard. If you wish to know what the user does on the website or if they get access to a particular file and how they use it, you can get the answers from the screen recording. Time filters make searching for the desired recordings quick and easy.
In addition to Live Viewing and Screen Recording, CleverControl can take screenshots. Screenshots are triggered by one of the three user's actions: change of active window, entering a website, or copying something to the clipboard. Thanks to these configurations, the software can capture significant work-related activity. There is an extra setting allowing additional screenshots of chats on social media and messengers. It should be used only where legally permitted, properly disclosed, and necessary for a documented business purpose. This way, you can review relevant work-related communication activity according to company policy.
Customers should configure screenshots proportionately and exclude private communications and sensitive personal content where required by law or company policy.
As a result, CleverControl's screen monitoring capabilities provide visibility into configured work-related activity on company devices and allow authorized managers to review this activity in real time and retrospectively.
Is it legal to monitor employees' screens?
Like any other monitoring method, screen monitoring is regulated by state and regional laws that may differ from country to country. For example, the American ECPA (Electronic Communications Privacy Act) authorizes employers to monitor company-owned devices, such as phones, computers and laptops. However, California, Florida, Louisiana and South Carolina constitutions state that their residents have a right to privacy. So setting up an employee monitoring system there may be tricky and require special attention to detail.
If we generalize American, European and Asian laws in employee monitoring, the rule of thumb will be to inform your employees about tracking and get their consent to it. However, before implementing any monitoring system, you should consult your lawyer and consider the intricacies of your local laws.
Conclusion
Screen monitoring is one of the most visual monitoring methods because it can capture configured work-related activity. However, screenshots only may not be enough to cover the user's activity. When choosing the software for the company, it is worth learning what screen tracking options it offers. Choose systems like CleverControl that offer live screen viewing and screen recording to provide better visibility into staff productivity.