In light of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s address to the nation last night, 15 March 2020, and global healthcare guidelines from the World Health Organization (WHO) and other experts on pandemics, containing the spread of the novel coronavirus Covid-19 is vital. This has made remote working a sudden imperative for many companies – but this could have a negative effect on productivity if it’s not managed properly.
To help organisations remain open while mitigating against the virus’s spread, local software developer Saucecode is making its remote monitoring and management tool Tistro available for free.
As more than 100 countries now report new infections, the best defence against the virus seems to be isolating affected regions to prevent its spread. Countries with confirmed outbreaks are banning public gatherings; and those with few or no locally-transmitted cases are urged to limit opportunities for the virus to spread by doing the same.
Graham Fry, MD of Saucecode, believes that more organisations would be letting their employees work from home if they had a way to effectively monitor and manage workers’ productivity. In fact, letting employees work from home can actually improve productivity and efficiency if it’s done right, he points out.
Tistro is an agent-based tool that lets managers measure the work that employees are doing at any time.
Unlike many other tools on the market, Tistro goes further than simply monitoring when employees are logged into work systems, rather measuring the actual work being done, while still protecting individual privacy.
Saucecode is making free use licences available for the next three months so that companies can enable their employees to work from home while the Covid-19 pandemic plays out.
“Remote working is probably one of the most effective ways for companies to keep their employees safe from infection,” Fry points out. “Any organisation with 20 or more user licences can now sign up for the next three months, at zero license cost.
“This offer is valid until 30 June and there are absolutely no strings attached: On that day, companies can simply stop using the product with no other implications; or they can switch to our commercially-available subscription model if they find the value the product offers beneficial.”
Business and operations manager Brian Little says a company could be up and running on the cloud-based Tistro system within about an hour. “Once we have created the company is its own secure virtual server, they can download agents for their remote workers to install,” he explains. “This will take each user about three minutes, and managers will be able to start monitoring and managing their users immediately.
“Reports and analytics are also included in the free offer”, Little adds.
Learn more about Saucecode’s free offer at www.saucecode.tech/campaign