Kyle
As the internet gets faster and faster more and more remote work opportunities have opened up at companies both large and small. Sure gigantic Fortune 500 companies with a telecommuting workforce have monitoring tools in place, but for small companies like startups and even blogs can’t afford the same luxury.
Sure you can see output but how can you tell if a delayed assignment is a legitimate issue in the workflow or perhaps your telecommuter decided to take a three hour lunch?
Charlotte startup Worksnaps, founded by Waley Zhang, hopes to solve the problem of monitoring remote workers. They employ technology similar to the kind you may find monitoring children using the internet. Spyware would be an unfair term for the type of service Worksnaps offers because ultimately it’s meant to benefit the business owner or entrepreneur but essentially that’s what it is.
Worksnaps technology is based on screen shots that are taken while the remote worker is “on the clock”. A service like Worksnaps may draw harsh criticism from privacy advocates. The easiest way around that would be to supply the remote worker with a company owned computer. As Zhang told us in an interview, it’s about monitoring work flow and making sure that remote workers are actually working, not what they may be doing in their free time.
Worksnaps has already attracted 3000 clients with over one million hours tracked, and with that, productivity improves.
Check out the rest of our interview with Zhang below.