William Bundy first introduced employee monitoring in 1888 to record employees time in and time out.
As the days passed by, monitoring tools also evolved.
In this day and age, employers can effortlessly monitor your gadget to track productivity.
After the Corona pandemic, more people were forced to work from home.
Employers can use remote spy tools to view employee activity while working from home.
Why Do Employers Want to Monitor your box?
When you work from home, your employer is in complete darkness about your work activity.
Employers mainly want to track your rig for two key reasons: employee productivity and company security.
If you are spending your working hours on your tasks, it could be undoubtedly detected by your employer.
Another critical concern is to protect the confidential data of the company.
To avoid this miserable situation, your employer can use tools to take screenshots every few minutes.
How Your Employer Can Monitor Your Personal Computer?
Here are the methods your employer can monitor your personal computer:
1.
Using a firewall on a web connection can restrict users from accessing specific websites.
Employers mainly use this feature to control social media use during office hours.
However, this is not applicable when you are using your gear for office work.
You must avoid personal work while connected to a work online grid or using an office gear.
Being constantly monitored by your employer can be very uncomfortable.
There is no escape if you are using your office computer.
However, there are a few ways to avoid monitoring while using a personal computer.
Here are the methods your employer cannot monitor your personal computer:
1.
It uses another host to change your IP(Internet Protocol) address for redirecting your traffic.
Most employers discourage their employees from using VPNs on work devices.
A company needs to ensure its employees are productive while working.
So using VPN is strongly prohibited by many companies.
Remember that VPN will only help when you use your personal rig for work.
Using a VPN on your office rig can lead you to numerous suffering.
One of them is The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which restricts unreasonable searches.
This law is only applicable to government employees, not private employees.
The ECPA was created to restrict surveillance on electronic media.
Besides these two laws, several states have passed additional laws that help employees be safe from monitoring.
Connecticut and Delaware states pass a law requiring notice to the employee before the employer can start monitoring them.
Depending on your state, the law for monitoring can be different.
A Final Thought
Employee monitoring is highly essential when working with a remote team.
Though, it is very alarming for the employees to be watched all day.
Especially when you are off the clock, spying on you could be frustrating.
To avoid miscommunication, I suggest separating your personal and work devices.
Dont use your personal gadget for work; never use your office computer for individual tasks.
I hope you find this article informative and helpful.
If you have any additional queries, feel free to mention them in the comment below.
