How to Increase Employee Performance with User Behavior Analytics

All companies are looking for ways to drive higher performance, productivity and profits, but without any data to affect change is only going to have a minimal impact. Employee performance can be measured in many ways, but one of the most important indicators is how employees manage their daily activities at the endpoint. This can be achieved with user behavior analytics coupled with computer monitoring.

What is User Behavior Analytics (UBA)?

Simply put, UBA is an analytical tool that has a deep focus with respect to how people (users) interact with endpoint devices. So for example, with a product like InterGuard, you have access to all of this user driven data such as emails sent/received, keystrokes typed, files being sent to a USB drive, chat conversations, and much more. Disseminating this data can be cumbersome without automation and if you are trying to pinpoint specific users that fall out of the environmental baseline without some kind of UBA implementation, you are going to be left in the dark when employees deviate. UBA takes all of the recorded data, compiles it in to a standard baseline and compares all individual user activity against all other employee norms. This allows companies to predict when an employee is not performing as optimal as the base which allows for coaching, or corrective actions. Inversely UBA will also shine a spotlight on employees that are high performers against the average.

User Behavior Summary Reports

User Behavior Summary Reports is a customizable set of data that one can select based on users that are part of a group (or department) to see how they compare with respect to a specific recorded event.

Let us assume that the above data is measuring data entry from employees. So the more keystrokes they type, the more productive they would be. As you can see based on the data, John and Tim would be considered more productive, Bill would be close to the baseline average while Steven and Alyssa are the low performers. This kind of data when presented to management allows them to immediately be able to start coaching the low performers, and even praise the employees that are above the baseline. Having this insight will have an immediate impact on increasing employee performance.

Another example would be if your IT department has noticed a bandwidth issue, but needs to better understand who is using the most so they can report the incident to management. You can run a report based on minutes used by streaming media application by user within a group or if you even wanted, by the entire company.

Again, one can quickly identify who is streaming media (from places like YouTube, Pandora, etc.), provide the information to management to take corrective actions if needed.

With InterGuard you have the ability to run these kind of reports for all of the recorded data (websites, email, screenshots, logon events, applications used, file tracking (USB, Dropbox, browser downloads), chat and IM, keystrokes, files sent to printer, and many more). Having the ability to benchmark users by their peer group is an invaluable toolset for management to increase employee performance.

User Behavior Frequency Notifications

Now that you can clearly see how InterGuard will baseline the recorded data and compare it against other users/groups, you can start using frequency notifications to alert you the moment anomalous behavior (determined by you) has occurred.

So for example, let’s say that you know the average person in the data entry department sends about 23 emails a day and this determines how they are communicating internally which is a marker of productivity. You can easily set up a notification that will provide you with a list of users/people who fall below 23 emails sent every day. You will know the device/user name, what the criteria for the rule is, and the result (how many email they actually sent that day).

See example of a User Behavior Frequency Notification below:

Much like the UBA reporting, the notification that is sent based on activity by users will provide management with immediate insight with respect to pinpointing performance issues within your organization more efficiently than ever before.