Employee Monitoring: Watching Personal Cell Phone Use

When employees use their own phone at work, it’s not your issue … right? Maybe you should rethink your answer. What do your employees do with their phones at work is something you just can’t overlook. The moment an employee uses a personal device or phone to read a message, send an email or call someone, your business is at risk. Having your own personal my spy app is very convenient.

Since every mode of communication has gone digital, monitoring employee activity has become critical than ever. Most companies regardless of their size report that they monitor their employee activities including internet use, emails and the use of personal text messages and calls.

The laws generally allow employers to monitor employers’ communication on the job and for a strong reason. No company wants to keep employees that engage in workplace bullying, selling business secrets and even corporate espionage. Monitoring emails, calls and text messages has its own advantages. In fact knowing how much time employees spend on calls and text messages can help you improve your business performance.

Another important concern for businesses is that employees are getting distracted by their phones. It shouldn’t be surprising that you find your workers texting a lot. Moreover, you just cannot take away employee’s phones away when they come to work and hand them back at the end of the day. Sounds unprofessional, right?

Well, most companies do have rules for managing excessive texting; calling, and personal use of cell phones during work hours, but the policy is not enforced correctly. Simply put, your workers would continue to use their phones when no one’s watching them. While at work, all employees are supposed to refrain from excessive personal use of phones and other mobile devices. Remember that talking over the phone, answering phone calls, replying text messages or blogging or tweeting throughout the day regardless of whether the phone or mobile device used is provided by the company or not is a productivity killer. What’s worse is that excessive use of phone and mobile devices is distracting to others.

While employees are expected to limit personal interactions at work, they might not follow the rules. Another important thing is that employees can use their personal phones and mobile devices to steal valuable business information and secrets and use it for personal gains. To spy on cell phone you have to have the right product.

Furthermore, your company reputation may be susceptible to damage as a result of your employee’s bad behavior. Sadly, your coworkers might be sending sexually explicit messages at work and this is not acceptable behavior. Of course, sending a message seems like a private activity, but harassing a colleague by sending malicious text messages and emails is really no different from abusing the worker physically. Also, posting racist, inappropriate comments about a colleague on social networking website (even if it is done as a prank) is a serious offense.

Constant distraction can become an expensive problem for businesses. If your employees fail to concentrate at the task at hand and remain busy texting, calling, emailing or doing anything with their phone or mobile device, your business can never achieve the targets you’ve set in the first place. The use of personal phone or tablet is a major risk if the employee has access to sensitive information about the company, customers and even other employees. An employee can transfer private information via email or text messages and this can be used against your company.

So how do you protect your business from these pitfalls? Well, the solution centers along smart employee monitoring. Ensuring that every personal device owned by the employee is not used against the company can save you from great deal of trouble. How to spy on someone is a main concern for many. 

5 Blunders That Make Employee Monitoring Ineffective

Advancing technology has made our world a better place, or convenient at the least. But of course, there are drawbacks to everything and technology has created many loopholes that can compromise the security of a company. 

Many systems have gone digital, such as banking, shopping, job hunting, socializing, and even dating. This has obviously given rise to the use of digital devices, even in the workplace. Most companies have strict guidelines for use of cell phone devices, but if the nature of work requires employees to use their mobile at work, it becomes important to monitor their activities.

The trouble arises when monitoring policies are not properly communicated to the employees, which can make these policies ineffective. Implementation of new policies can be a tough challenge because it’s usually met with a rebellious attitude from the employees. Here are five common blunders that can make monitoring policies ineffective:

1.     Employees Are Not Involved

This is the number one blunder employers make. They don’t consider the opinion of their employees of any importance. In fact, most employers make their employees feel replaceable, which affects their performance. Needless to say, the final word should come from the employer, but the opinions of all employees should be taken into consideration. It’s all part of the implementation process.

Taking their opinions is still an optional choice, but informing them of the policy beforehand is a must. When you surprise your employees with a new policy, they feel their employers could merely introduce any new policy and they will have to comply no matter what. This could result in a low employee retention rate. Thus, involving employees in the implementation of monitoring policies is the first step towards make it effective.

2.     The Purpose and Benefits Are Not Communicated

The best way to introduce a monitoring policy to your employees is by explaining why it’s being implemented and how it benefits the organization and its employees as a whole. There are many ways an organization can roll out its new policies to all its stakeholders. They could hold a formal meeting, prepare a presentation, send a mass email or delegate the responsibility to the department heads.

All factors need to be taken into consideration, such as the size of the company, the cultural environment and the nature of the employees’ work. Employees who have been working with the organization for a long time, with a clean record, need to be handled in a careful manner. You don’t want to lose the loyalty of your senior employees by inappropriately introducing new policies.

3.     Rules and Regulations Are Not Set Clearly

The most important thing to keep in mind when implementing a new policy is making it as clear as possible. Employees get extremely anxious when they don’t understand what’s going on and how a new policy is going to affect them. By explaining everything in laymen terms, they feel more comfortable with the new implementation. All rules should be precise, clear, realistic and practical. When it comes to monitoring, specificity of rules is important because general guidelines contain many loopholes. Along with the policies, employees should also be aware of the consequences they have to face if the policy is followed through.

4.     Policy Violates the Law

Workplace monitoring policies can be a little tricky and thus, all employers are encouraged to thoroughly make sure the new policies are not violating the law. For instance, the law forbids the monitoring of personal devices of employees. Only company-owned devices can be monitored and the employer is required to take the employees’ consent before enforcing that policy.

5.     Policy Missing Official Status

A policy is taken seriously when it becomes part of their employment contract. For this reason, employers are encouraged to get their employees to read the entire legal document before getting it signed. This helps in avoiding complications and resistance down the road.

Spy apps for cell phones are becoming very popular with parents and employers. 

Teen Dating Apps You Should Be Aware of

Online dating apps take social media to another level, since most of those employing these applications are looking for more than just friends. While it may be a great opportunity for single adults to interact with and foster relationships with other adults, via just swiping through eligible prospects, it is not so great when teens resort to them. It is not that they are inept at finding friendships in their vicinity, but they do it more out of curiosity, merely for giggles, or a go at an adult’s life. While their intentions may be innocuous, there is a lot that can go wrong; from whacky parties, to cyber bullying, to online predators, to harassment, to sex-tortion, the list is endless. With no way to identify the credibility of a person online, and the myriad risks it may pose, teenagers are inadvertently pushing themselves off a cliff by using these sites. Here are some dating apps that your teens might be testing boundaries with:

1)    Tinder

Tinder is a messaging and photo dating app for perusing pictures of potential matches within a certain mile radius from your location. You are presented with a plethora of pictures, matching your preferences, and only like the pictures you find attractive. In turn, Tinder lets the other person know when their photos have been liked. If the person reciprocates your approval of them, Tinder allows you two to connect. An iPhone spy app has helped solve many problems.

This online dating site is strictly geared towards adults and your teen shouldn’t be mingling in this social arena at all. The app makes use of interpersonal information such as proximity to others and geographical locations, through certain social algorithms, to strike potential matches, making it a breeze for your child to get noticed by sexual predators while out and about. Not to mention the blow to their self esteem when their “like” is not reciprocated or their friend has more suitors than them!

2)    Badoo

This adult-only dating app boasts more than 200 million users, some of whom may be teenagers. The app functions by identifying the location of a person by tracking their device’s location and then matches the profiles and pictures of potential hundreds of individuals the person could contact within the vicinity.  While the policy of Badoo strictly states that the picture of anybody under 18 could be posted and prohibits vulgarity, the content is not exactly moderated and sexual images have a way of showing up.

3)    Down

Down is another adults-only dating app that sorts through the Facebook friends-list of a user to deduce whether their friends use the app as well. Simply being on the down application notifies those in the know that the user is “down” for hooking up for sex! If an underage individual wants to join “Down”, they are required to falsify their age on Facebook to gain Access to down services. The application keeps a score on the desirability of each user by giving them a “Down” score based on the opinion of other users.  In addition to shattering their fragile self-image, it also encourages risky and promiscuous sexual behavior; something that you should be on the lookout for! Spyware for cell phones has been very convenient to use.

4)    Blendr

Blendr is another hook up app that works on GPS localization. Blendr allows just about anyone to interact with another prospect, which breeds trouble and often leads to sexting. Danger also stems from the fact that GPS localization paves way for the users to communicate with other Blendr members in their location. It’s far from cringe-worthy to have strangers aware of your child’s physical location. In addition, Blendr doesn’t need access to the user’s Facebook account or their contact to seek prospects, anybody in the vicinity can contact anybody who has the app installed, including mere acquaintances, friends, and foes. Since there is not much in the way of verification or identification of age, keeping kids away from such diabolical activities falls in the hands of parents. Cell phone spyware is one of the most growing industries.