It's no longer necessary to use stealthy spyware to keep tabs on employees' computer use. Now you can install a variety of cloud-based, time-tracking programs that let workers monitor their own productivity, reports Ann Bednarz at NetworkWorld.   

During an eight-hour workday, it is rare that people sitting at computers are productive for more than five hours, says Joe Hruska, CEO and co-founder of RescueTime, a maker of monitoring software. Using crowdsourcing techniques, RescueTime ranks productive and unproductive activities online, and it enables users to block distracting sites or applications for set time periods.  

It compares team members' work, alerting a manager to how much more time on average one member may be spending on unproductive activity or social networking. For organizations that view some recreational Internet activity as a means of increasing overall productivity, the tool is touted as a good alternative to blocking sites altogether.

Another vendor in the sector, RWave Software, recently rolled out a workforce analytics and productivity offering that automatically tracks users' activity and compares it to the work they are supposed to be doing. At day's end you can see how much time was spent on assigned tasks.

Studies have shown that IT pros often do not feel good about spying on other employees, and the new, overt tracking tools not only let employees know they are being watched but they also give them some control over the monitoring. With software from RWave, for example, users can indicate that they are on personal time and the monitoring is paused.

For more:
- see Ann Bednarz's article at NetworkWorld

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