When it comes to choosing the right work device policy for your business, you will likely come across two options: bring your own device (BYOD) and choose your own device (CYOD). Both of these solutions have their own unique benefits, but which one is right for your business? Let’s take a closer look at both BYOD and CYOD.

What is BYOD?

With BYOD, employees use their own devices, such as smartphones and laptops, to connect to the company network, access business data and applications, and perform work-related tasks. Since staff members are already familiar with these devices, your employees can get right to work, which leads to higher efficiency and better employee experience.

BYOD also gives employees greater flexibility and increased mobility, enabling them to work anywhere, anytime. They don’t have to be chained to a desk in order to do their tasks. Instead, they can use their smartphones to check emails or their laptops to edit documents even when they’re on the go.

Your business stands to gain a lot from BYOD as well. Aside from enjoying enhanced employee productivity, you don’t have to buy new equipment and spend on maintenance and upgrades. The money you save can be invested in other things that further improve your bottom line.

However, there are a few risks to consider before implementing a BYOD policy in your workplace. First, there is the potential for data breaches. If an employee’s device is lost or stolen, sensitive company information could be at risk. Additionally, BYOD policies can lead to increased support costs, as employees may need help troubleshooting issues with their personal devices.

If you’re considering adopting BYOD, you must implement a BYOD security policy to ensure that your company’s assets are well protected. This policy should outline key elements such as:

• Access rights ‒ What are the apps and data that employees can access from their personal devices?
• Security requirements – What security measures must an employee’s device have to be deemed fit to be used for work?
• Mobile device management (MDM) solution – What MDM solution must your IT team use to remotely wipe company data from lost or stolen devices?

What is CYOD?

CYOD allows users to choose from a list of devices provided by the company. In this regard, CYOD is similar to BYOD — it gives employees freedom of choice. While not everyone may like the selection of available devices, they may appreciate having a say regarding what computer or mobile device they’ll be using for work. You can also offer employees the option to purchase the device from the company, paying in installments or upfront.

For businesses, the biggest advantage of CYOD is security. You can equip devices with security features to ensure that sensitive data is properly protected. However, since you own the devices, the responsibility of spending on security and optimization will fall on you. This may not be ideal for small businesses or those with a limited budget.

Which policy should your company adopt?

Ultimately, the choice between BYOD and CYOD boils down to what your business needs. If you’re operating on a tight budget, a BYOD policy is the right option for you. On the other hand, CYOD is perfect if you want to ensure the security of your data and other company assets.

Whichever policy you choose, it is essential to carefully consider the implications before making a decision. Call us today and our IT experts will be happy to guide you.

When it comes to what IT equipment your staff uses, you can implement one of two policies, namely bring your own device (BYOD) and choose your own device (CYOD). Let’s explore the pros and cons of both BYOD and CYOD, so you can make an informed decision about which option best fits your business needs.

What is BYOD?

With BYOD, employees use their own devices, such as smartphones and laptops, to connect to the company network, access business data and applications, and perform work-related tasks. Since staff members are already familiar with these devices, your employees can get right to work, which leads to higher efficiency and better employee experience.

BYOD also gives employees greater flexibility and increased mobility, enabling them to work anywhere, anytime. They don’t have to be chained to a desk in order to do their tasks. Instead, they can use their smartphones to check emails or their laptops to edit documents even when they’re on the go.

Your business stands to gain a lot from BYOD as well. Aside from enjoying enhanced employee productivity, you don’t have to buy new equipment and spend on maintenance and upgrades. The money you save can be invested in other things that further improve your bottom line.

However, there are a few risks to consider before implementing a BYOD policy in your workplace. First, there is the potential for data breaches. If an employee’s device is lost or stolen, sensitive company information could be at risk. Additionally, BYOD policies can lead to increased support costs, as employees may need help troubleshooting issues with their personal devices.

If you’re considering adopting BYOD, you must implement a BYOD security policy to ensure that your company’s assets are well protected. This policy should outline key elements such as:

• Access rights ‒ What are the apps and data that employees can access from their personal devices?
• Security requirements – What security measures must an employee’s device have to be deemed fit to be used for work?
• Mobile device management (MDM) solution – What MDM solution must your IT team use to remotely wipe company data from lost or stolen devices?

What is CYOD?

CYOD allows users to choose from a list of devices provided by the company. In this regard, CYOD is similar to BYOD — it gives employees freedom of choice. While not everyone may like the selection of available devices, they may appreciate having a say regarding what computer or mobile device they’ll be using for work. You can also offer employees the option to purchase the device from the company, paying in installments or upfront.

For businesses, the biggest advantage of CYOD is security. You can equip devices with security features to ensure that sensitive data is properly protected. However, since you own the devices, the responsibility of spending on security and optimization will fall on you. This may not be ideal for small businesses or those with a limited budget.

Which policy should your company adopt?

Ultimately, the choice between BYOD and CYOD boils down to what your business needs. If you’re operating on a tight budget, a BYOD policy is the right option for you. On the other hand, CYOD is perfect if you want to ensure the security of your data and other company assets.

Whichever policy you choose, it is essential to carefully consider the implications before making a decision. Call us today and our IT experts will be happy to guide you.

Bring your own device (BYOD) and choose your own device (CYOD) have become popular options in the workplace. But what do these terms mean, and which one is right for your business? In this blog post, we will define both of these options and explain their benefits.

What is BYOD?

With BYOD, employees use their own devices, such as smartphones and laptops, to connect to the company network, access business data and applications, and perform work-related tasks. Since staff members are already familiar with these devices, your employees can get right to work, which leads to higher efficiency and better employee experience.

BYOD also gives employees greater flexibility and increased mobility, enabling them to work anywhere, anytime. They don’t have to be chained to a desk in order to do their tasks. Instead, they can use their smartphones to check emails or their laptops to edit documents even when they’re on the go.

Your business stands to gain a lot from BYOD as well. Aside from enjoying enhanced employee productivity, you don’t have to buy new equipment and spend on maintenance and upgrades. The money you save can be invested in other things that further improve your bottom line.

However, there are a few risks to consider before implementing a BYOD policy in your workplace. First, there is the potential for data breaches. If an employee’s device is lost or stolen, sensitive company information could be at risk. Additionally, BYOD policies can lead to increased support costs, as employees may need help troubleshooting issues with their personal devices.

If you’re considering adopting BYOD, you must implement a BYOD security policy to ensure that your company’s assets are well protected. This policy should outline key elements such as:

• Access rights ‒ What are the apps and data that employees can access from their personal devices?
• Security requirements – What security measures must an employee’s device have to be deemed fit to be used for work?
• Mobile device management (MDM) solution – What MDM solution must your IT team use to remotely wipe company data from lost or stolen devices?

What is CYOD?

CYOD allows users to choose from a list of devices provided by the company. In this regard, CYOD is similar to BYOD — it gives employees freedom of choice. While not everyone may like the selection of available devices, they may appreciate having a say regarding what computer or mobile device they’ll be using for work. You can also offer employees the option to purchase the device from the company, paying in installments or upfront.

For businesses, the biggest advantage of CYOD is security. You can equip devices with security features to ensure that sensitive data is properly protected. However, since you own the devices, the responsibility of spending on security and optimization will fall on you. This may not be ideal for small businesses or those with a limited budget.

Which policy should your company adopt?

Ultimately, the choice between BYOD and CYOD boils down to what your business needs. If you’re operating on a tight budget, a BYOD policy is the right option for you. On the other hand, CYOD is perfect if you want to ensure the security of your data and other company assets.

Whichever policy you choose, it is essential to carefully consider the implications before making a decision. Call us today and our IT experts will be happy to guide you.

Viva Insights is an app within Microsoft’s Viva suite. It provides individuals, managers, and business leaders with the necessary insights to develop better work habits and improve their work environment. In this blog, we will explore how Viva Insights works and its many features.

How does Viva Insights work?

Viva Insights shows users personalized recommendations that can help them do their best work. By analyzing Microsoft 365 data, such as emails, calls, meetings, and chats, it can generate insights for building better work habits that help people become more productive and improve their well-being. The tool can gather and provide the following information:

• Personal insights help individual users understand how they work and what they need to do to improve their performance.
• Teamwork habits let you determine work habits that may cause burnout, such as having too many meetings, too little focus time, and frequent after-hours work. This way, team members can learn how their habits affect the rest of the team and how they can help their colleagues balance productivity and well-being.
• Organization trends provide managers and business leaders visibility into how the work culture is impacting employee productivity and well-being. They can use the recommendations to make necessary improvements.
• Advanced insights can help company leaders address vital issues about organizational resiliency, such as how work affects their people and the business.

What are the other features of Viva Insights?

Aside from providing important insights, Viva Insights also has a few handy features that can help employees improve their work life. These include:

• Stay connected: This feature allows users to interact better with their colleagues. It also suggests one-on-one meetings with managers or colleagues, sends meeting reminders, and reminds users to RSVP when needed.
• Protect time: Viva Insights users can schedule focus time right on the app. Do Not Disturb functions are automatically enabled to prevent distractions.
• Send praise: Users can acknowledge their team’s and colleagues’ hard work by sending them praise via private chat or a Teams channel.
• Reflect: This feature encourages workers to focus on themselves. Users can create reminders to see how they are feeling and access their reflection history to determine how their feelings have evolved. Users can share this data with their managers and other company leaders.
• Headspace: Users can access the mindfulness app Headspace within Microsoft Viva to help them start their day grounded, relax before a big presentation, or focus before starting a project. They can also use it to close out their day with a mindfulness exercise during their virtual commute.
• Take a break: This feature encourages users to take several deep breaths for one minute.
• Microsoft To-Do: This task management application helps users better manage their tasks and commitments.

To make sure you reap all the benefits of Viva Insights, give us a call. We’ll be more than ready to help you set it up and tailor it to your business’s needs.

Viva Insights is a powerful tool that gathers data on your employees’ work habits, analyzes this information, and then recommends ways to help team members perform more efficiently. The application also seeks to improve your staff’s productivity and well-being so they can achieve their full potential.

How does Viva Insights work?

Viva Insights shows users personalized recommendations that can help them do their best work. By analyzing Microsoft 365 data, such as emails, calls, meetings, and chats, it can generate insights for building better work habits that help people become more productive and improve their well-being. The tool can gather and provide the following information:

• Personal insights help individual users understand how they work and what they need to do to improve their performance.
• Teamwork habits let you determine work habits that may cause burnout, such as having too many meetings, too little focus time, and frequent after-hours work. This way, team members can learn how their habits affect the rest of the team and how they can help their colleagues balance productivity and well-being.
• Organization trends provide managers and business leaders visibility into how the work culture is impacting employee productivity and well-being. They can use the recommendations to make necessary improvements.
• Advanced insights can help company leaders address vital issues about organizational resiliency, such as how work affects their people and the business.

What are the other features of Viva Insights?

Aside from providing important insights, Viva Insights also has a few handy features that can help employees improve their work life. These include:

• Stay connected: This feature allows users to interact better with their colleagues. It also suggests one-on-one meetings with managers or colleagues, sends meeting reminders, and reminds users to RSVP when needed.
• Protect time: Viva Insights users can schedule focus time right on the app. Do Not Disturb functions are automatically enabled to prevent distractions.
• Send praise: Users can acknowledge their team’s and colleagues’ hard work by sending them praise via private chat or a Teams channel.
• Reflect: This feature encourages workers to focus on themselves. Users can create reminders to see how they are feeling and access their reflection history to determine how their feelings have evolved. Users can share this data with their managers and other company leaders.
• Headspace: Users can access the mindfulness app Headspace within Microsoft Viva to help them start their day grounded, relax before a big presentation, or focus before starting a project. They can also use it to close out their day with a mindfulness exercise during their virtual commute.
• Take a break: This feature encourages users to take several deep breaths for one minute.
• Microsoft To-Do: This task management application helps users better manage their tasks and commitments.

To make sure you reap all the benefits of Viva Insights, give us a call. We’ll be more than ready to help you set it up and tailor it to your business’s needs.

Viva Insights uses the power of data and analytics to help businesses of all sizes improve their employees’ productivity. Let’s learn more about this business productivity tool and how it can benefit your organization.

How does Viva Insights work?

Viva Insights shows users personalized recommendations that can help them do their best work. By analyzing Microsoft 365 data, such as emails, calls, meetings, and chats, it can generate insights for building better work habits that help people become more productive and improve their well-being. The tool can gather and provide the following information:

• Personal insights help individual users understand how they work and what they need to do to improve their performance.
• Teamwork habits let you determine work habits that may cause burnout, such as having too many meetings, too little focus time, and frequent after-hours work. This way, team members can learn how their habits affect the rest of the team and how they can help their colleagues balance productivity and well-being.
• Organization trends provide managers and business leaders visibility into how the work culture is impacting employee productivity and well-being. They can use the recommendations to make necessary improvements.
• Advanced insights can help company leaders address vital issues about organizational resiliency, such as how work affects their people and the business.

What are the other features of Viva Insights?

Aside from providing important insights, Viva Insights also has a few handy features that can help employees improve their work life. These include:

• Stay connected: This feature allows users to interact better with their colleagues. It also suggests one-on-one meetings with managers or colleagues, sends meeting reminders, and reminds users to RSVP when needed.
• Protect time: Viva Insights users can schedule focus time right on the app. Do Not Disturb functions are automatically enabled to prevent distractions.
• Send praise: Users can acknowledge their team’s and colleagues’ hard work by sending them praise via private chat or a Teams channel.
• Reflect: This feature encourages workers to focus on themselves. Users can create reminders to see how they are feeling and access their reflection history to determine how their feelings have evolved. Users can share this data with their managers and other company leaders.
• Headspace: Users can access the mindfulness app Headspace within Microsoft Viva to help them start their day grounded, relax before a big presentation, or focus before starting a project. They can also use it to close out their day with a mindfulness exercise during their virtual commute.
• Take a break: This feature encourages users to take several deep breaths for one minute.
• Microsoft To-Do: This task management application helps users better manage their tasks and commitments.

To make sure you reap all the benefits of Viva Insights, give us a call. We’ll be more than ready to help you set it up and tailor it to your business’s needs.

Insightly Analytics helps engineering teams stop problems before they happen, like slow release cycles, bottlenecks and uneven workload distribution that can lead to employee burnout. The San Francisco and Hyderabad-based startup announced today it has raised $1 million led by Together Fund, which it will use to expand its product, engineering and marketing teams.

Founded in 2022, Insightly’s target users are chief technology officers and engineering vice presidents who want to analyze their DevOps research and assessment to help make decisions and identify the causes of issues that can potentially lead to less revenue, less productivity or employee attrition.

Sudheer Bandaru, founder and CEO of Insightly, told TechCrunch that Insightly is currently at six-digit revenue and has some unicorns and public companies in its customer pipeline that can potentially take it to a million dollars in annual recurring revenue over the next few months. Its user base includes a total of 12,000 engineers, including teams in the U.S., India, Kenya and Israel. The platform is customizable by company size and its clients range from 50-member engineering teams to multi-billion-dollar organizations that have more than 800 engineers.

Before founding Insightly, Bandaru worked at organizations like AT&T, Merrill Lynch and Hewlett-Packard. Then he moved on to a role as director of engineering at a markets informational resource website publisher that was later acquired by Bankrate. It was at that job, and during his next role as founder of recruiting platform Shortlist Professionals, where Bandaru says he learned the pain points of managing diverse engineering teams across countries and continents. These challenges were exacerbated by the move to remote work during the pandemic.

“There was little to no way for organizations to objectively see how efficient their engineers were,” he said.

As a result, Bandaru began to hack together a solution with data-driven insights to use at Shortlist Professionals. Then, as he started to get interest from leaders at large tech organizations, he realized his hack had the potential to be more than a side project. Bandaru notes a report from Stripe that says $300 billion is wasted per year around the world in software development inefficiency, even though 96% of tech leaders say improving engineering productivity is their top priority.

He adds many engineering leaders try to assess productivity with analytics from Git and Jira, but those processes are manual and time-consuming. Insightly is designed to automate the process of aggregating data to help speed up software development, find bottlenecks and gain visibility into workload distribution. Integrating Insightly takes about five minutes, is no code and immediately aggregates three months of historical data.

Insightly works by pulling in data and metrics from Git and Jita. Bandaru says its insights can help teams release products faster by spotting bottlenecks and distribute workload more evenly to avoid engineer burnout. It also maps business outcomes to tech efforts, helps teams decide if they should rework or do new work on a version, catch bugs and helps reduce tech debt by showing metrics like maintenance percentage to help teams tackle the most pressing issue first.

Insightly’s cockpit

Some use cases include a multi-billion dollar organization with almost 1,000 engineers that discovered most of their engineering teams were stuck for three to four out of five days because of team structure and release dependencies by using Insightly’s metrics on its release cycle and work distribution. Sendy, a Kenya-based logistics company with less than 100 engineers, discovered that the reason for employee attrition was burnout because of an uneven workload, which company leaders had not been aware of because people worked remotely. Meanwhile, one client realized that the amount of time that went into maintaining legacy applications over building new features as engineers left during the Great Resignation. New engineers had no option but to maintain their old code. Visibility into this problem allowed the company’s CTO to sunset low revenue generating products and build new products stead.

Insightly allows customizations at levels including creating teams by squad level, geographic locations, tech stack and business units. For example, Bandaru said one of clients discovered that a team with more reviewers based in Latin America, and the rest of the team in the U.S., had slower release cycles compared to teams who were all based in the same time zone.

Two of Insightly’s competitors are Jellyfish and Linearb.io. Bandaru said Insightly differentiates by not only showing analytics, but also why they are happening, and providing context to every metric and data point.

Seattle-based Zeitworks, which is launching its private beta today after raising a $4.5 million seed round in 2020, wants to give enterprises data-driven tools for improving the productivity of their teams and streamline their business operations. That’s a market that’s seeing quite a bit of growth right now, especially given how the pandemic has made remote work a standard business practice and how the overall talent crunch is forcing many businesses to do more with fewer employees. The overall idea here is to give businesses better insights into how teams work and where there are opportunities for improving business processes beyond simply using automation.

“The problem that we’re really addressing is that there’s teams and companies in just about every industry who execute all kinds of repetitive business processes every day– and to be clear, it’s business processes executed by humans,” Zeitworks CEO and co-founder Jay Bartot told me. “Think about processing bank loans or insurance claims or HR onboarding of new employees, moving information from system to system. Oftentimes, those systems aren’t interconnected or don’t have APIs. The problem that we’re solving is that the majority of these processes can’t be optimized because they’re undocumented and unmeasured. They’re just not understood.”

Image Credits: Zeitworks

Unsurprisingly, understanding these processes is at the core of Zeitworks’ product. But since these processes aren’t documented, you can’t exactly build a rule-based engine around discovering what people are doing. Instead, the company uses an AI-driven task mining system that uses signals from a wide variety of sources, mostly with a focus on the desktop applications these users interact with during their daily work. Bartot actually noted that he prefers the term ‘process intelligence’ over ‘task mining,’ given that task mining tends to be associated with creating RPA bots more than empowering teams and helping them work better.

Image Credits: Zeitworks

Now, in order to do all of this, Zeitgeist has to run its agent on an employee’s desktop and those users’ daily work is then tracked with quite a bit of granularity. Microsoft, with its Productivity Score, does something similar, but the company also faced quite a bit of backlash over it, given that managers could drill down to the individual employee and see how many emails they sent, chats they participated in, etc. The company later made some changes that put the focus more on the organizational level and away from individual users.

“In our world, the kinds of productivity scores that we are recording are around this repetitive work — the fact that people are processing bank loans or you know insurance claims repeatedly is a fundamental part of what we’re measuring and what we’re doing with pattern recognition,” Bartot explained when I asked him about the potential for backlash. “So the productivity scores are really geared towards that specific kind of repetitive work. I think in the case of Microsoft and other tools that we see out there also in the productivity space, when you’re measuring across many different types of workers up and down the worker stack from the highest level knowledge workers all the way down to kind of digital laborers, I think it’s more challenging to come with something that is useful and something that would make sense to people.” He believes that because his company has a very different kind of focus, its scores will be more useful and acceptable to users. 

Looking ahead, Zeitworks is starting to build out its go-to-market capabilities now that it has proven its system with a number of pilot customers. The company is also working on getting its SOC 2 certification.

Image Credits: Zeitworks

If you’re managing a remote workforce, you may wonder whether your team is doing their jobs or wasting time watching random videos on the internet. Using employee monitoring tools is a good way to keep track of your team’s productivity. But is this practice ethical? Read on to learn more.

What is employee monitoring?

Employee monitoring is the practice of using digital tools to track employee activity and performance, and the progress of their tasks. The data collected can be used to identify patterns, trends, and correlations across different teams allowing managers to gain insight into various work processes, and how they can be improved.

What are the benefits of employee monitoring?

Here are the key benefits of monitoring your employees online:

1. Improved productivity
Using employee monitoring tools can help you track how much time employees spend visiting non-work-related websites or chatting with friends. If an employee’s productivity goes down significantly because of these activities, you can address the issue by reminding that specific employee about the company’s policy regarding visiting non-work-related websites and/or limiting his/her internet access.

When employees know that their activities are being monitored, they’re more likely to focus on their tasks and avoid inappropriate internet use.

2. Better security
According to Verizon’s 2021 Data Breach Investigations Report, 85% of breaches reported in 2020 were due to human error. Monitoring the online habits of employees can help employers track and flag instant messages and emails containing sensitive and private information. In addition, managers can block employees from visiting phishing sites or websites that automatically download malware onto unprotected computers and mobile devices.

3. More efficient project management
Monitoring employee activity provides managers with continuous reports on workers’ progress, allowing them to stay on top of multiple projects. These reports can help managers delegate tasks and adjust schedules to meet deadlines.

What are the disadvantages of monitoring your employees online?

Despite its benefits, employee monitoring also comes with some drawbacks, such as:

1. Trust issues
Employees may feel that their privacy is being violated. This can lead to low employee morale and reduced productivity, as well as distrust between and among colleagues.

2. Legal issues
States and countries may have varying policies on employee monitoring, but one thing is constant ⁠— an employee’s consent is needed before any type of monitoring can be done.Without the consent of an employee, an employer can be charged with privacy violations and discrimination if the information collected is used to harm that employee.

To avoid potential problems that can arise from employee monitoring, employers should explain why monitoring is needed. A written policy should be created explaining how employees will be monitored, what information will be collected, and how that information will be protected.

If you want to learn more about employee monitoring, give us a call today.

The COVID-19 pandemic pushed many businesses to embrace a work from home setup. However, one of the challenges managers faced was checking the productivity of each employee. Monitoring employees online is a good way of tracking the productivity of a remote workforce. Keep reading to learn more about employee monitoring.

What is employee monitoring?

Employee monitoring is the practice of using digital tools to track employee activity and performance, and the progress of their tasks. The data collected can be used to identify patterns, trends, and correlations across different teams allowing managers to gain insight into various work processes, and how they can be improved.

What are the benefits of employee monitoring?

Here are the key benefits of monitoring your employees online:

1. Improved productivity
Using employee monitoring tools can help you track how much time employees spend visiting non-work-related websites or chatting with friends. If an employee’s productivity goes down significantly because of these activities, you can address the issue by reminding that specific employee about the company’s policy regarding visiting non-work-related websites and/or limiting his/her internet access.

When employees know that their activities are being monitored, they’re more likely to focus on their tasks and avoid inappropriate internet use.

2. Better security
According to Verizon’s 2021 Data Breach Investigations Report, 85% of breaches reported in 2020 were due to human error. Monitoring the online habits of employees can help employers track and flag instant messages and emails containing sensitive and private information. In addition, managers can block employees from visiting phishing sites or websites that automatically download malware onto unprotected computers and mobile devices.

3. More efficient project management
Monitoring employee activity provides managers with continuous reports on workers’ progress, allowing them to stay on top of multiple projects. These reports can help managers delegate tasks and adjust schedules to meet deadlines.

What are the disadvantages of monitoring your employees online?

Despite its benefits, employee monitoring also comes with some drawbacks, such as:

1. Trust issues
Employees may feel that their privacy is being violated. This can lead to low employee morale and reduced productivity, as well as distrust between and among colleagues.

2. Legal issues
States and countries may have varying policies on employee monitoring, but one thing is constant ⁠— an employee’s consent is needed before any type of monitoring can be done.Without the consent of an employee, an employer can be charged with privacy violations and discrimination if the information collected is used to harm that employee.

To avoid potential problems that can arise from employee monitoring, employers should explain why monitoring is needed. A written policy should be created explaining how employees will be monitored, what information will be collected, and how that information will be protected.

If you want to learn more about employee monitoring, give us a call today.

With remote work becoming the new normal for many businesses, employers can’t help but worry about how much work their employees are getting done. One way to determine this is by monitoring employees online. However, this practice can raise privacy concerns. This article will shed light on what employee monitoring is and how it can help your business.

What is employee monitoring?

Employee monitoring is the practice of using digital tools to track employee activity and performance, and the progress of their tasks. The data collected can be used to identify patterns, trends, and correlations across different teams allowing managers to gain insight into various work processes, and how they can be improved.

What are the benefits of employee monitoring?

Here are the key benefits of monitoring your employees online:

1. Improved productivity
Using employee monitoring tools can help you track how much time employees spend visiting non-work-related websites or chatting with friends. If an employee’s productivity goes down significantly because of these activities, you can address the issue by reminding that specific employee about the company’s policy regarding visiting non-work-related websites and/or limiting his/her internet access.

When employees know that their activities are being monitored, they’re more likely to focus on their tasks and avoid inappropriate internet use.

2. Better security
According to Verizon’s 2021 Data Breach Investigations Report, 85% of breaches reported in 2020 were due to human error. Monitoring the online habits of employees can help employers track and flag instant messages and emails containing sensitive and private information. In addition, managers can block employees from visiting phishing sites or websites that automatically download malware onto unprotected computers and mobile devices.

3. More efficient project management
Monitoring employee activity provides managers with continuous reports on workers’ progress, allowing them to stay on top of multiple projects. These reports can help managers delegate tasks and adjust schedules to meet deadlines.

What are the disadvantages of monitoring your employees online?

Despite its benefits, employee monitoring also comes with some drawbacks, such as:

1. Trust issues
Employees may feel that their privacy is being violated. This can lead to low employee morale and reduced productivity, as well as distrust between and among colleagues.

2. Legal issues
States and countries may have varying policies on employee monitoring, but one thing is constant ⁠— an employee’s consent is needed before any type of monitoring can be done.Without the consent of an employee, an employer can be charged with privacy violations and discrimination if the information collected is used to harm that employee.

To avoid potential problems that can arise from employee monitoring, employers should explain why monitoring is needed. A written policy should be created explaining how employees will be monitored, what information will be collected, and how that information will be protected.

If you want to learn more about employee monitoring, give us a call today.

Folk, the next-generation CRM started by European startup studio eFounders, is going live today. If you’ve paid attention to TechCrunch, I’ve already covered Folk in the past. Since then, the product has evolved a bit and is now ready for prime time.

“The biggest SaaS [software-as-a-service] category is CRM. The highest valuation in the SaaS industry is Salesforce,” co-founder and COO Simo Lemhandez told me. “But i’s also a category with products that are all considered as outdated,” he added.

For instance, Lemhandez thinks it’s too hard to customize a major CRM product to your needs. “We’ve all heard about Salesforce’s integration teams even though we are all used to the self-serve model,” he said.

Like many modern SaaS products, Folk draws inspiration from popular products that are highly flexible yet very powerful. Examples include Notion, Airtable, Figma and Shopify.

For the past 18 months, Folk has been iterating on its beta product. There are 10,000 people on the company’s waitlist who want to give it a try. I saw a demo of the product and sure enough, you can get started without any integration team. When you first sign up, you are asked to create a workspace and invite your coworkers.

Image Credits: Folk

Thanks to an integration with Google Workspace, users can import contacts, emails and calendars into the product. Folk instantly starts working on your contact database by merging duplicates, indexing all fields and enriching contact data.

With a simple keyboard shortcut, Folk users can search in their contact database. You can search for a name, a company, etc. Once you have this foundation, you can start leveraging your network.

Folk lets you create groups to organize your contacts. Each group can represent a project or a specific group of people. For instance, you can create a group for PR, another one for your existing investors, another one for potential clients, etc.

When it comes to adding contacts to groups, you can search through your contacts, import new contacts from a file, or leverage various integrations with third-party services. You can imagine integrations with Calendly, Webflow, Zapier, etc. You can also expect extensions for Zoom and a browser extension that integrates with LinkedIn and Gmail. Folk is still building some of those integrations.

Each group is highly customizable. Users can add columns, filter and order contacts, add some logic to some fields. For instance, you can order your contacts based on your most recent interactions. At any time, you can also switch to a pipeline view so that you can more easily see the status or your projects.

Folk lets you send batch messages with variables, such as first name and last name. Team members can also add comments to a contact so that everyone can remain on the same page. There’s also a reminder feature.

While Folk competes with traditional CRM products like Salesforce and HubSpot, the startup also consider database and spreadsheet tools like Notion, Airtable, Coda and Excel as competitors. There is also a new generation of CRM products on the market, such as Attio — a startup that I covered last year.

But it’s a gigantic industry with some companies that just don’t use any CRM at all. There will be room for more than one startup in the space. Folk has raised $4.5 million from Accel and 50 different angels.

Image Credits: Folk