RMail’s Location Active Tracker is a More Employee-Friendly Application

Everyone is talking about MFA – Multi-Factor Authentication – for security. What about WFA? Better together?

Well it started as WFH, now WFA, and if you are WFA do you need MFA? (Wow, this sounds like it was written by those acronym-loving “inside-the-beltway” Washington D.C. types.

It seems there is pressure to end Work-from-Home (WFH) policies on the one hand, and on the other, morph into Work-from-Anywhere (WFA). Some are promoting with either, one might want MFA (Multi-Factor-Authentication). But how do you know who is WFH or WFA anyway? Who needs these extra layers for WFH or WFA security?

IT security folks, now you can know (see!).

In late September, we published an article about how you can track an email’s location from where it is opened. We have since received A LOT of feedback, specifically about how RMail email Location Active Tracker can track where work emails are being opened in case an employee is working outside the state or country they are expected to be in.

Despite having a disclaimer at the end of the article stating that “we’re not advocating spying on employees who want to WFH [work from home],” we still got some good-natured ribbing about “further enabling the surveillance state.” So, let’s look at a more employee-friendly application of the Location Active Tracker:

Let’s say your employee (Jerry, we’ll call him) has been burning the candle at both ends. He’s been putting in 10+ hours a day working for you while also balancing family and a side gig as a concert pianist. He’s been working so hard that he accidentally emailed you his latest musical composition instead of the project update you requested. Being the empathetic boss you are, you tell Jerry he should take some more days off on his upcoming holiday vacation to Vienna so that he can best recharge. If all goes well, Jerry comes back to work to start the new year refreshed, and you get a more productive and innovative Jerry.

The thing is, Jerry is one of those workaholic types who just can’t seem to unplug from the office. He will regularly give you status updates on projects via email when he is on PTO and will respond to emails with the same dedication as if he were putting in a regular workday. (When Jerry emailed you on Christmas Day last year with a project update, you vowed that this will never happen again.)

Here’s where RMail’s Location Active Tracker comes in. By leveraging this tool, you could essentially create a souped-up version of Registered Email™ tracking for a particular message, thereby seeing who is reading their email while on vacation. Imagine being able to see if Jerry is actually using his vacation time to visit Schönbrunn Palace, Kunsthistorisches Museum or Maria-Theresien-Platz instead of sitting in his hotel checking work email.

If he is checking his email, then you can send him a note to the effect of, “Hey, please stop working and enjoy your vacation! How often are you going to get to see The Hofburg in person? And, no, it’s NOT where David Hasselhoff was born. It’s a beautiful baroque palace you should be visiting now instead of submitting expense reports.”

And how might you implement such an employee morale (and productivity) boosting feature? With Location Active Tracker, you can choose COMPANY level, USER level, and MESSAGE level settings. You could add Active Tracking Intelligence on a particular message (in Outlook, Gmail, or by gateway rules). This is what essentially creates that souped-up Registered Email™ tracking for a particular message, and it is here where you would be able to see if Jerry is taking full advantage of his PTO.

P.S. Jerry was back at it, see below, working while on holiday, in between ski runs, in Big Bear, California, on Thanksgiving Day!

Please contact us to learn more about RMail and Active Tracking email intelligence and/or Location Active Tracker. You’ll thank us when Jerry returns from Vienna refreshed and with a great recipe for homemade Tafelspitz.

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