Why Time Theft Is More Important Than You Think

Time stealing is becoming more common in businesses all over the world. As the prevalence of mobile devices and the internet grows, more employees are being distracted and waste 15 minutes here and there throughout the workday.

While this may not appear to be a problem at first, the cost of paying people for work they didn't do can have a significant impact on your bottom line over time.

That is clearly what we will talk about in this article. We will discuss the following topics:

1. Define time theft.

2. Methods for detecting it;

3. And, most importantly, how to avoid being cheated out of time.

So let's get started with this article.

What Is Time Stealing?

When an employee paid for work that they never did, this is known as time stealing. Goldbricking is another name for it. And, while an employee can manipulate the system in various ways, time stealing boils down to someone claiming wages they don't deserve.

It encourages lower productivity if continued for a long time. Also, keep in mind that one employee's actions can impact all of their coworkers. As a result, prolonged time stealing has become the new normal for any team.

As team morale declines, everyone becomes less accountable for their assigned tasks, resulting in missed deadlines, subpar work, and financial losses. The longer you ignore time stealing, the more serious it becomes.

Now let us move to our next topic;

How Can Time Stealing Be Detected?

Here are a few points that show the probability of your worker stealing time:

1. Availability issue

Due to a heavy workload and poor time management skills, some of us may find it hard to keep up with all of our coworkers. However, if an employee is frequently unavailable, you should check in with them, especially if they have fewer responsibilities. Late responses could indicate that someone is drifting away, fooling around, and squandering their time.

2.Inappropriate work quality 

It is as self-evident as the midday sun. Distractions occur often, resulting in poor work quality. An employee who does not produce satisfactory results despite working longer hours than others may be dissatisfied with their assigned tasks and prone to drifting off.

3. Misuse of responsibility

It's nice to take a break from responsibilities now and then. People who avoid taking the lead all of the time, on the other hand, may lack the motivation to work. As obvious as it may seem, goldbrickers avoid taking on responsibilities in order to avoid being held accountable to authorities for unfinished projects.

4.Unawareness

For the GenXers and GenZees, being absent-minded is nothing new. However, if you find yourself correcting the same errors in their tasks, it's likely that they aren't paying attention to the required parameters. Worse, they aren't even listening to you because they are preoccupied with something else.

How Can You Prevent Time Stealing?

Without further ado, I'll get right to the point. There are two options for dealing with this problem:

1. Organic way

2. Easy way

Organic way

How could we overlook the fact that the office environment is a great contributor to yawning and dozing off among employees? Your workplace ignites a fire in your belly, steers motivation like a morning coffee, and fuels your vision, and ignites a fire in your stomach.

Are you unable to relate? Many of us are unable to do so.

A happy, healthy workplace is a rare commodity. Here's a secret:

1. Encourage collaboration on your property. Allow people to take on more responsibilities and engage in mindful activities. Encourage everyone. Work hard and have fun!

2. Enhance communication among all, regardless of cultural differences, generational differences, job roles, or anything else. Ascertain that no one feels left out.

3. Make your workplace more pleasant. The color and layout of your workplace have an impact on how your employees act and work.

4. Accept constructive criticism from your peers with open arms. With their inputs, be communicative rather than combative. Always value the viewpoint of a third party.

Easy way

Employers must keep a close eye on their employees' activities due to the ever-changing trends in modern workplaces. With the majority of them working from home, determining and increasing productivity has become a difficult task. Use monitoring tools. 

However, it is now a requirement for creating a safe and transparent workplace that promotes fair play.

Here are the features that an employee monitoring tool should have:

1. Employers who are unfamiliar with such tools will appreciate the intuitive dashboard and simple setup.

2. Automated Screenshots to capture regular staff activities in real-time without invading their privacy;

3. App & website tracking done to identify potential malware and assess sources of distraction.

4. Automated Email Reports for designated employees to save time sharing individual employee information;

5. Graphs of productivity to analyze workflow and team activities over the course of a week or month;

6. Idle Time, keyboard tracker and Working Hours Tracking to determine how much time employees spend working during the day;

And there are plenty more.

Happily, EmpMonitor can handle all of these tasks and more. With our clever features, you can track your employees' whereabouts in real-time and see how their work is progressing. EmpMonitor can be used in the corporate, healthcare, finance, legal, and other services in mind.

So, before wrapping up this article, we are sharing an effective video for analyzing your employees performance by using EmpMonitor.

To watch the video, click here

Wrapping It Up!! 

Time theft is no laughing matter. Many employers have seen an increase in employee productivity and creativity over the years simply by managing their employees' time and dedication to their jobs. And there is no one-size-fits-all solution to the problem of workplace time cheating.

Hope this article helped you!

 

Understanding Real-Time User Activity Monitoring And Its Benefits!

User activity monitoring solutions are the tools that help in monitoring and tracking the user behavior on any device, network, or IT-owned resources. It is popular in many organizations/industries these days for surveillance purposes. These tools can track the overall work performance of the users/employees and report it to the admin/employer whenever required for detecting any malicious or suspicious activities like insider threats or illegal internet activities.

By deploying user activity surveillance software, an organization can more readily identify suspicious behavior and alleviate risks before they result in data infringements, or at least in time to lessen damages. It assists as a proactive analysis of end-user activity to delimit misuse of access perquisites or data protection policies, either through ignorance or spiteful intent.

How Does User Activity Monitoring Tools Work?

The purpose of such tools is to protect the sensitive and confidential information of an organization while ensuring availability and agreement with data privacy and security regulations. But it doesn't function like a simple monitoring tool, but it goes beyond it! It can monitor all types of user activities, like:

• Internet usage behavior

• Download history

• Accessing unauthorized files/information

• Video recording of sessions

• Screenshot capturing

• Kernel monitoring and much more

 

All of the above information captured by a tool can be stored and later viewed and accessed by the assigned authority at any given point in time. It is also helpful in determining workforce productivity.

Let us now discuss various benefits of user activity monitoring tools.

Here are some of the benefits of using a user activity monitoring software/tool/solutions:

• Provides assurance that the employees are not messing up with a company's confidential data or leaking them to other rivalries when they leave.

• You can immediately detect and investigate suspicious user activity

• Helps to have real-time identification along with detailed reporting of historical activity

• Reduces the risk of inappropriate actions that can lead to malware infections or data breaches

• Decreases the cost of compliance while offering intelligence needed to improve security measures

• Analyzing the data should be based on the associated risks, defined policies, time of day, and identity context

The Core Benefits Of User Activity Monitoring Software

1. Cybersecurity: It is one of the prime advantages of deploying employee monitoring software. It provides strong cybersecurity by keeping a close and constant watch on every employee and their work behavior during office hours. In case of any suspicious activities, the software provides notifications to the higher-level authority.

2. Legal compliance and policies: There are a set of rules and regulations that everyone has to follow in every company. With employee activity monitoring software, you have this rule-based alert mechanism to create rules to implement the policy. It has an auto alert system, which sends out the report to users whenever someone disregards the policies.

3. Employee productivity: It allows you to monitor the overall work performance of the entire workforce. It is a great way to recognize the over-working and under-working employees and measuring their capabilities to assign them tasks/projects. While all the employees are working from home these days, it also tracks the remote working employees and their login/logout time.

Why Do We Need An Employee Activity Tracking Solution?

Since all of us are working remotely until the offices reopen, monitoring employees has become a mandated concern for all employers. It is not about distrusting employees but being sure that the desired level of productivity and goals are achieved even if the employees work from their home, sitting on a couch. The time flexibility has been granted to the workforce considering the current COVID-19 situation. There are so many difficulties already that a person undergoes, the reason why the time levy! But in return, an employee has to perform well and try to achieve his daily targets. Another concern is the fear of Insider threats. Such software detects any suspicious activities and reports them to the employer within no time.

Some Effective Tips For Proper User Activity Monitoring

Many IT security teams lack perceptibility into how their users are accessing plus utilizing sensitive data, leaving them susceptible to insider threats or outside attackers who have gained access to systems. Best exercises for user activity monitoring include:

• Make sure that all the employees of the surveillance methods and policies of your company.

• It is even better to have their acknowledgment of the contractual bond between the business employer and employees.

• Allow privileged access to information to the employees who need it for effective work production.

• All other activities not required for a user work role should be limited. It is not necessary to give exempt users unlimited access. Also, the limitations can be executed for admin tools and system customs.

• Decrease the number of distributed accounts and execute strong password policies.

• Be alert about recognizing stolen credentials.

• Manage remote access through company-based protocols. Deny protocol channels such as file transfers between group members, port-forwarding, and disk sharing.

• Execute strict data policies for your organization to guarantee more reliable cybersecurity for your business.

Some Reliable Employee Activity Monitoring Tools For 2021

• EMPMonitor

• Time Doctor

• ActivTrak

• Inter Guard

• Bamboo HR

• Hubstaff

Also watch: EmpMonitor - Best Employee Monitoring Software 

Final Words

User activity monitoring is a prime component of data protection for all organizations today, looking at the current pandemic difficulties. Deploying an employee tracking software that combines all the features like data recovery and classification, policy-based controls, advanced reporting capabilities with identifying suspicious activities, and Insider threats.

Do Not Ignore These 6 Insider Threat Statistics For Real!

After the covid returns, some of the countries face lockdowns, due to which some organizations are working remotely again. But the fear of insider threats remains constant, and employers spend most of their day figuring out what their employees are up to, as the data are confidential and need to be in safe hands. 

As a solution, there are insider threat detection systems that the management should opt to have a threat-free environment, even if their employees are working remotely. There are also some insider threat statistics that every employer should know before they commence the WFH. Such as:

IDENTIFY THE CULPRIT:

As there is no human contact or the employers cannot keep a direct eye on their workers, the risk of threats increases at an enormous speed. There was a time when the management kept no records of the uploads, downloads, file transfers, etc., but after the covid pandemic, the insider threats increased by 5 times, so the threat detection software helped the management keep a close eye on them. 

EASY TO AFFORD: 

Having a threat of online and insider fraud employers, go for some software to keep an eye on their workers. But, they end up running in huge losses as the software is too costly for them to afford. As per a recent survey, we found that the expenditure of every firm has risen upto 10% due to cybersecurity. Employers spend billions on cybersecurity and yet get no results. So, do not go for any random software, all you need is to examine, compare and then pay for insider threat security. 

REDUCE INCIDENT POSSIBILITIES:

Train your employees that they should understand the consequences of leaking a company's information and the effect it can cause in the organization, as more than 30% thefts are caused by insiders. As per the cybercrime survey, the insiders are the ones who leak data the most. So, every employee must be trained and must have the capability to avoid such fraud. 

HARD TO DETECT: 

Insider threats are hard to detect as compared to online frauds. For example, an organization with 500 employees is a challenging task to manage for employers. If any data gets leaked in such a situation, it's nearly impossible to find the actual culprit. So, every organization should install insider threat detectors in the employee's systems to catch the culprit red-handed. 

THE MISUSE:

Since every employee has edit/view access to the company's confidential data, you cannot keep track of every employee's activities. As a result, some employees make hay when the sun shines and sell the crucial information to rivals or other firms to earn extra money. 

UNIDENTIFIABLE THREATS:

The management mentions many precautions that every employee should take while they work online on any platform. As per the latest records, 50% thefts are just because of the negligence of the employees. But, some workers are so irresponsible and neglect the threats coming to them. Unfortunately, it affects the firm, and the organization pays the price. 

You can also watch: How To Keep Your Company’s Sensitive Data Secure?

WHAT ARE THE KINDS OF INSIDER THREAT?

There are 4 kinds of insider threats that every other employee should know. Let's discuss them in brief: 

1. Negligent Employees:

Some employees are irresponsible and neglect what consequences the firm may face when the company's data gets leaked such threats come under, 'negligent employees.'

2. Malicious Employees:

Employees who sell or leak the company's information to earn extra money notifies as malicious employees.

3. Cyber Traps: 

Employers train their employees to not fall in cyber traps, like spam mails as they contain viruses which can hack your system and gain access to the system. Almost 25% of the time, data hacking takes place because of the cyber or phishing traps generated by hackers. 

4. Inside Agents:

Some employees work as inside agents in an organization. It means they work in a partnership with the hackers and steal/affect the internal data. 

WHAT BENEFITS DO YOU GET FROM INSIDER THREAT DETECTION SOFTWARE?

Once the management goes for an insider threat detection system, he gets numerous benefits from it. Like:

• The software works as time-tracking software.
• It captures the screen automatically. 
• Employers can even use it as onboarding software.
• You can easily manage your employees, even if they work remotely.
• The management can keep records of their working and non-working days/hours. 

WRAPPING UP:

So, we hope these insider threat statistics helped you enough to secure your confidential data. Being an employer, the safety is in your hands, but installing an insider threat detector can be quite beneficial and time-saving for firms. 

How Stealth Mode Monitoring Can Benefit Your Business?

Today, maintaining a workforce is a difficult task for business owners, particularly as the majority of people choose to work from home. In such a situation, companies mostly need stealth mode surveillance tools that can track the work habits of employees' devices while without interrupting any activity.

So, in this article, we've summarized some of the features of management software that can assist you with employee performance.

What is Stealth Mode?

In stealth mode, the administrator can monitor all user activities by tracking their device's movements and behavior without interrupting them. In this mode, no device tab icon or reminders will be shown, everything permitted (nothing is blocked regardless of operation) file shadowing, and file tracing are available to see and track all user activity. Moreover, the administrator provides notifications (dashboard) for all activities.

Features Of Stealth Mode Monitoring Software

Transparent Application Monitoring

Employee management software will also keep track of which applications have been used by the employees. And, if anyone is evaluating the analytic data on some process or reading individual documents on a spreadsheet. You will quickly discover who has been using the specific device.

Keystroke Monitoring

Employers have the resources they need to keep a close eye on specific employees' productivity during working hours, especially with the advent of employee management software. Keystroke logging techniques are one such service that many companies use. This form of tracking tool, also known as a "keylogger" or "keystroke logger," maintains a real-time record of each key an employee presses on their keyboard.

Network Security 

You can also use firewall security to protect the network if you have stealth surveillance tools. So, the employees can't access websites or apps that might hurt your company. Through managing networks, administrators can also block malicious sites, preventing malware and viruses from infiltrating the system. Administrators will provide access to the managers and team leaders, enabling them to observe employee's computer activities in their workplaces.

Screenshot Monitoring

One of the essential features of any stealth monitoring software is the ability to capture screenshots of an employee's computing activities. Managers may use this feature to see whether their employees are running or not. If any employee wastes working hours on non-productive activities like accessing social media, chatting, or accessing unwanted sites, then management can take action against that with the help of this feature. 

Productivity Analysis 

Employee efficiency evaluation is the key to any business accomplishment. And with the help of this feature, the productivity of employees can easily measure. Measuring employee productivity has a direct impact on the quality of employment of both employees and employers. As a result, employee management software generates comprehensive evaluations and insightful statistics that deliver a complete overview of the performance and productivity.

The Best Employee Monitoring Software of 2021

After knowing the features of stealth mode monitoring software it is very important for a business to know the best software for 2021. 

So following are the best software:

EmpMonitor

EmpMonitor is a popular employee monitoring software. It enables employers and administrators to track workplace productivity by securely monitoring all devices in the organization from a specific system. By using real-time computer management software, a user can view and monitor employees' computing operations in real-time. EmpMonitor is an agent-based solution that offers on-premise solutions to all of its users.

To know more about EmpMonitor then check out this video here:

ActivTrak

One of the best workforce management software for small firms is ActivTrak. It includes the key functionality required in a tech solution, such as content filtering, website and app management, activity logging, and notifications. It gives basic service to its users and also easy to install, configure, and use.

Time Doctor

Time Doctor provides comprehensive insights into how employees perform their tasks during the workday. It provides features like view websites and apps accessed while working, as well as a screenshot of the device screens. It will not only monitor the overall amount of time working by everyone on the staff, but it will also break down how much time was spent on each project, account, or mission.

Summing-up

With this article, we have enlightened some of the unique aspects of stealth mode management software that enable employers to appropriately manage their employee's productivity. And if you're concerned about data security or increasing productivity in your business, stealth mode monitoring software will help you accomplish the best outcomes.

 Time Theft: Knowing How Employees Steal Time and Ways To Detect It!

Time deprivation occurs when an employee gets paid for the work he has not done or for the time they are not working. There are petty things that get stolen from the workplace, but time theft is an expensive issue. In today's constantly growing mobile workforce and internet availability, employees stealing time has become one of the major concerns for employers. It is so big of a concern that it often costs a billion-dollar loss and low productivity in many organizations.

By clocking in a little late, operating a little less, getting a little longer breaks, and straying off work a little bit daily. The employees might stack up work for an entire year! Only a flexible routine and strict schedule can help in maintaining productivity- but the question is, are your employees working to their full potential? 

To avoid time theft, you need to understand the adverse effect of it first. Think about a dripping tap, it won't bother you much for a few minutes, and if you do not fix it, the water dripping will also fill a bucket in some hours. The same is with employees, stealing time.

Now that we know 'what is time theft', let us move on to another segment:

The Top 5 Ways Of Time Theft That Employees Commit!

A person who may be reluctant with their negligent behavior may not feel sorry for their acts if they face no consequences. Here are the various time theft tactics practiced by employees:

• Beating the clock

It is like faking the actual work hours and showing extended and overtime to portray sincerity.

• Buddy punching

It is fake proxy attendance. It happens when a friend punches your attendance on your behalf but secretively, even if you are not physically present at the office.

• Lengthened lunch breaks or regular breaks

Even after a determined schedule and strict diligence, an employee might run out of their clock during lunch and miscellaneous breaks- sequentially working for lesser hours

• Flubbing off

Not every spontaneous employee is a goldbricker- but excessive socializing, frequent calls, naps, and unauthorized breaks always lead to depriving productivity.

• Overusing the internet for personal purpose

Checking up on social media and your friends can feel refreshing but to a certain extent. Using the internet for personal entertainment and faking the work updates is a red flag.

How To Detect Time Theft?

Before you think 'how to avoid time theft' in the workplace- determine the goofy, little hints. A lot of enigmas pop up in mind in such situations like: 

• How do you know if your co-worker is rendering an article or caressing their kitty?

• How do you recognize who timed in and then nestled back into bed?

• How do you know if a person is following educational YouTube videos or the new movie trailer? 

• How do you know if the punching-in time is honest and not a bluff to cover the extra time and get compensated for it?

Nothing to worry about here the indicators of your employees stealing time while at work:

1. Check for their frequent unavailabilities, especially of the employees with the low workload. If you get a late response, then there is a high chance that they are goofing around.

2. It is only human to refrain from their responsibilities and work sometimes, but not always! Look out for people who avoid taking leads and showing a lack of will to do any work every time.

3. Watch out for the low-quality work and declining productivity graphs.

4. Keep a close eye on the employees who chat a lot. They maintain a happy vibe at the office but certainly disturb the other employees as well.

5. Track the employees who delegate their work to subordinates and take all the credits. They are highly contagious of time theft.

6. Check the detailed work updates of employees regularly. Some of them purposely keep it long and lengthened, trying to project the excessive work done.

7. Team meetings can be a little boring sometimes, but a couple of employees gazing at the oblivion when something important gets discussed is a sign of them doing it often during working hours. 

Now that you are very well aware of the sinister ways your employees can be time thieves. Let us discuss how to avoid time theft in the workplace.

Mainly there are two ways to avoid the time thieves at the office:

The Organic Way

As we all know, the office environment can be the biggest reason for us to yawn during work and feel lazy to complete the daily targets. Your office should fuel your creativity, imagination, ignite a fire in your belly, steer motivation like a morning coffee!

A happy work environment is a rare stock. Here is a secret recipe to it: 

1. Promote your team to collaborate and share ideas/opinions related to a project

2. Be open to constructive criticism from the employees

3. Improve the aura of the workplace. Start with a nice color combination that emits good vibes.

4. Be communicative and easy on your employees by making them feel valued.

The Easy Way

The easiest way to identify time thieves is by installing employee monitoring software. It has become nearly impossible for physical surveillance at the office or when the employees are working remotely. Deploying monitoring software has become one of the latest trends in 2020 and 2021. It helps in building a safe and transparent workplace and provides a detailed productivity report of every employee.

Monitoring software has the following features:

1. Captures screenshots of an employee's computer screen at regular intervals

2. Records keystrokes

3. Tracks the internet activities, including emails, downloads, browsing history, etc

4. Shows productivity graphs

5. Tracks the most used apps and websites

Some of the most-used monitoring software are:

• EmpMonitor

• Hubstaff

• CIPHR

• Leapsome

• Time Doctor

• PayCor

• Bamboo HR

Also watch: EmpMonitor: The Best Employee Monitoring Software

Wrapping Up

Time theft should not be taken lightly! As the only way to maintain excellent productivity is through efficient time management. After all, time is money, and money is precious. I hope this article provides you with all the desired information targeting the time thieves at your workplace and ways to detect them.