Employee monitoring software has become a critical tool for enterprises due to the sheer number of distractions and the transition to remote and hybrid working environments. The average worker has to contend with many distractions during workdays. If it isn’t smartphones and social media, it’s office gossip at the water cooler.
Unfortunately, the slightest distraction for an employee can tank an otherwise successful day. According to a study by the Mopria Alliance, the top three distractions are personal communications (online chats, texts, and calls), checking email or surfing the web, and unplanned conversations with work colleagues. These three gobble up to 23.6 hours per employee weekly with grave ramifications on productivity and the company’s bottom line.
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What is Employee Monitoring Software?
Employee monitoring software is a tool that monitors employee computer activity to provide reports that are used for decision-making.
It is one of the most effective ways for managers to measure employee productivity, particularly in home and remote working environments. In addition, it allows supervisors to monitor employee activity on company-owned devices.
Also read: Labor Shortage: Is AI the Silver Bullet?
How Does Employee Monitoring Software Work?
A standard employee monitoring software will capture an employee’s desktop screen, desired user activity, and employee keystrokes. It also logs the employee’s browser history.
Good employee monitoring software tools go a step further and analyze the data by executing algorithms and help find out if there are any areas of improvement in an employee’s productivity. Managers can select from a range of reports to inform their decision-making.
Below is a summary of the benefits of employee monitoring software:
- Reduce workplace distractions and increase employee productivity and efficiency: An employee monitoring software helps act as a deterrent. When employees know their computer activity is being monitored, they actively avoid distractions. Some software tools also alert staff when their screen or mouse/mouse pad has been idle for a specific time. Such reminders help ensure the team remains productive and efficient.
- Feedback on employee performance: During employee performance reviews, employees can show their managers their daily activity reports to prove they used the time productively and any distractions were necessary for work.
- Gain a complete understanding of employee activity: When managers review an employee’s report, they can see both sides of the story—employee performance and how they spend their time at work.
- Enforce company policies: Employers are responsible for enforcing corporate employee policy guidelines on how staff should use computers during working hours. And if a worker fails to abide by those rules, employers must verify that transgressions occurred or were likely to have happened.
- Improve security: Employee monitoring software also serves as the first line of defense against data leaks and employee fraud as well as employee cyber threats.
Best Employee Monitoring Software
We360.ai
We360.ai is a cloud-based employee monitoring program that allows you to get insights into your workers’ working environment. Whether they’re at home, in the office, or anywhere else in the world, it gives you the ability to turn data from all areas of your organization into useful information and practical solutions, so you can enhance how people work.
With over 5000 enterprise users worldwide, We360.ai’s solution is configurable in minutes to provide instant visibility into how employees are engaging with their company. It’s an ideal solution for HR professionals and C-suite executives wanting to scale their operations rapidly.
Key Features
- Stunning Dashboards: You no longer have to waste time consolidating productivity data or performing manual analysis. It delivers beautiful dashboards with intuitive graphs and charts based on employees’ activities, which you may view in a few minutes without needing any coding knowledge.
- Automated Attendance: Turn employee downtime into productive time by ensuring your team is present and accountable every minute of the day.
- Productivity Measurements: Track employee productivity per project or employee. You can view productivity data on various levels, such as mouse clicks, mouse movement, and keyboard clicks.
- Screenshots: Capture employee activity and screenshots at fixed intervals to validate their work.
- Reports: Generate detailed daily, weekly, monthly, or even yearly reports with a few clicks.
- Application Usage: Track employee activity per application and across productive and non-productive applications. Internal research by the developer shows that tracking application usage leads to a 63% increase in team productivity.
- Real-time Analytics: Analyze employee activity in real time, such as a live version of the employee’s screen, and combine with powerful analytics to generate actionable insights.
- Admin Mobile Application: The Admin mobile app on Android or IOS platforms gives you real-time visibility of employee activity and employee data from anywhere at any time.
- Domain Blocking: To enhance employee security, the developer offers an enterprise feature that allows administrators to block or unblock categories of external domains, such as social media, games, shopping portals, and other distracting websites.
- Project and Task Management: With We360.ai, you no longer need to use other platforms to manage and track projects. Easy-to-use task management is integrated with employee activity and productivity data, so you can assess how much time is spent on tasks and which employee spends the most time on each project.
Pros
- Easy to use and configurable within minutes
- It runs on MAC OS 10.11 and above, most Linux OS versions, and Windows 7 or later
- 24/7 remote support
- A dedicated account manager
- It comes with a free trial
Cons
- Lacks auto report scheduling
Pricing
We360.ai has a single pricing edition. Customers pay $3 per user per month for annual billing or $3.99 per user per month for monthly billing. The trial is a full-feature trial for seven days and allows up to five users.
Time Doctor
The developer bills its tool as “the cure for time-wasting habits.” With detailed analytics of where time is spent on the workday, Time Doctor lives up to its billing by providing employee-time analysis covering everything from web to computer usage. It is a comprehensive employee monitoring solution for managers who want complete insight into their team’s productivity.
Key Features
- Time Tracking and Employee Monitoring: You can track employee time and productivity by day, week, or month. It’s easy to see employee activity from a list of projects and tags.
- Screen Recording: Capture employee activity with the employee’s actual screens. This feature, which can be configured at fixed-time intervals or manually triggered, allows you to see exactly what employees are doing on the job.
- Activity Reports: Receive employee activity reports based on employee activity across all applications, employee screen recordings, and employee screenshots.
- Distraction Alerts: With Time Doctor computer monitoring software, employees get pop-up notifications when off track, such as being on Facebook for too long or their keyboard sitting idle beyond a set time threshold.
- Project Management and Budgeting: Easily track employee activity across projects to ensure productivity and financial goals are met.
- Customization Options: Flexibility is a key advantage of employee monitoring software. Many of Time Doctor’s options can be enabled and disabled as needed.
- Offline Tracking: Even when they go offline, Time Doctor employee monitoring software automatically tracks employee activities and builds a report that syncs the next time they get online.
- Integrations and API: Integrates with 64 third-party applications such as Asana, Basecamp, GitHub, Jira, QuickBooks, Salesforce, Slack, Teamwork, Trello, and more.
Pros
- Quick setup for both the admin and users
- Compatible with multiple devices and operating systems, such as Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS, and Chrome OS, and comes with a mobile app for Android and iPhone
- Comes with a free trial
Cons
- Lacks 24/7 support over calls
- Lacks a dedicated account manager
- Lacks in-depth screenshot insights
Pricing
There are three editions, Basic, Standard, and Premium, with pricing dependent on the number of users. For example, for 50 users, Basic Edition users pay $350 per month, while Standard users pay $490 per month, and Premium users pay $990 per month. In addition, custom quotes are available for more than 50 users. All plans come with a free 14-day full-feature trial.
Workpuls
Workpuls is a workforce analytics and productivity solution that allows your organization to function more effectively with actionable data insights. Learn how your team works best and boost productivity with employee productivity monitoring, automatic time tracking, remote team management, and more.
Workpuls’ insights assist you in developing more efficient processes, improving workflows, and balancing workloads, so your team can deliver their best work—all within a simple, lightweight platform.
Workpuls runs in the cloud or on-premises. It secures your data and makes compliance easier. Moreover, it scales with your ambitions whether you have 10 or 10,000 devices.
Key Features
- Automated Time and Attendance: Replace manual timesheets with automated time and attendance that is accurate to the second for a more efficient operation.
- Real-time Productivity Insights: Instantly gain insights on employee productivity with real-time dashboards, reports, and alerts.
- Time Tracking: Employees can track their own time with the employee app; managers can also use employee tracking time to keep everyone accountable throughout the day.
- Automated Time Mapping: Time mapping is a process of exploring and unlocking new value from your team’s everyday efforts by recording and analyzing how it’s spent.
Pros
- Simple and quick installation for both admins and users
- Multi-certificate security and dual data encryption
- Comes with a free trial
- Compatible with Windows and macOS devices
Cons
- No support for the Linux operating system
- No dedicated account manager
- Lacks 24/7 support over calls
Pricing
Workpuls has four pricing tiers:
- Employee Monitoring: $6.40 per user per month billed annually
- Time Tracking: $8 per user per month billed annually
- Automatic Time Mapping: $12 per user per month billed annually
- Enterprise: Custom quote
All plans come with a full-feature 14-day trial.
ActivTrak
ActivTrak helps businesses convert their latent productivity potential into reality. The world’s leading workforce analytics and productivity management software offers sophisticated insights that enable people to perform at their best, streamline operations, and maximize technology. In addition, ActivTrak’s Workforce Productivity Lab is a global center for ground-breaking research and expertise in human resources that helps organizations embrace and embody the future of work.
Key Features
- Productivity Reports: Get real-time insights into employee productivity with a customizable dashboard.
- Team Summaries: Track employee activity on a group basis and gain valuable insights on team efficiency, employee performance, and potential areas for improvement.
- Application and Website Usage: Get instant visibility over your entire digital business footprint to spot anomalies in web usage, apps used, and employee behavior patterns.
- Workload Management: Monitor your employee workloads and optimize employee productivity, ensuring employees have the right amount of work to do with a customizable employee activity meter.
- Productivity Coaching: You’ll have access to education and assistance for developing a culture that encourages employees to achieve ambitious objectives.
- Integrations: Integrates with familiar tools that power businesses such as Salesforce, Teams, Slack, Zoom, Google Workspace, Jira, Asana, Monday, and many more.
- Alarms and Website Blocking: Configure employee blocking on sensitive projects or configure website alarms that trigger based on a combination of conditions.
- Activity Classification: Track employee behavior patterns productive or unproductive activity classifications. You can also create distinct categories.
- Data Privacy Controls: Without losing any productivity insights, safeguard privacy and confidentiality while gaining employees’ trust.
Pros
- Simple setup for both admins and users
- Supports macOS 10.14 and above and Windows 8.1 and above
- Comes with a free trial
Cons
- Lacks Linux support
- Does not come with a dedicated account manager
- Lacks 24/7 support over calls
- Lacks a project management feature
Pricing
ActivTrak has four pricing editions based on the feature set:
- Free: This plan allows an admin to add up to three users. It has limited functionality and features and only 3GB of storage.
- Advanced: $9 per user per month billed annually.
- Premium: $15 per user per month billed annually.
- Enterprise: Custom quote.
Upon signup to the free plan, users get a free 14-day upgrade to the Premium version.
Hubstaff
Hubstaff is an employee monitoring program that offers business owners complete visibility into their workforce’s computer usage and more than 30 different integrations for third-party applications like Slack, Asana, Github, Jira, PayPal, and more.
The tool offers streamlined time tracking, team and project management on a nimble desktop, web, and mobile app. Admins can track work in real time with screen capture technology, geofences, and GPS tracking. You can also view reports, send out invoices, and pay your team from within the platform. It is available for Mac, Windows, Linux, Chromebook and Chrome extension, Android, and iOS.
Key Features
- Time Tracking: Hubstaff offers intelligent, streamlined time tracking. Track labor hours, set restrictions, and receive detailed timesheets to assess and approve all with a single tool. You can track your team’s time using a web app, desktop app, Android, or iOS device.
- Productivity: With Hubstaff, you can automate the management of remote teams. Proof-of-work tools boost efficiency and build trust. Customizable screenshots let you see the progress of your project as it happens. View what applications and URLs your team used. In addition, you can get productivity stats based on mouse and keyboard use. Virtual achievement badges can be awarded for efficiency and morale, while you can eliminate idle time with a single click.
- Field Service GPS-based Features: GPS Geofences automatically track employee movements around a given area, ensuring they can’t be logged in at job sites you define.
- Integrations: Use the Hubstaff Platform to build employee monitoring solutions with more than 30 integrations or APIs to be used across your business workflow.
- Workforce Management: Ensure you have the right staff for the job by scaling down workforces when necessary. The program’s workforce management capabilities offer flexible employee allocations based on employee availability, location, skillset, tools used, projects assigned, and time spent in an activity category.
Pros
- Comes with a free trial
- Offers employee monitoring features for a single employee for free
- It comes with a desktop, web app, and mobile apps that you can use on laptops, PCs, or phones
- Integrates with over 30 third-party applications
- 24/7 support over calls
- Flexible employee allocations based on employee availability, location, skillset, tools used, projects assigned, and time spent in an activity category
Cons
- Lacks a dedicated account manager
- Lacks in-depth screenshot insights
Pricing
Hubstaff has three pricing categories, each with three to four pricing tiers depending on the number of users required:
Category |
Monthly Cost | |||
| Free (1 User) | Starter | Pro | Enterprise | |
| Hubstaff Time | $0 | $7 per user | $10 per user | Custom Quote |
| Hubstaff Desk | $0 | $7 per user | $10 per user | Custom Quote |
Category |
Monthly Cost | ||
| Field | Desk & Field | Enterprise | |
| Hubstaff Field | $0 | $10 per user | Custom Quote |
Paid plans come with a free 14-day trial.
Choosing Employee & Computer Monitoring Software
Choosing employee and computer monitoring software requires businesses to do their homework and decide which platform is right for their needs. For example, you may need an all-inclusive package or something more specific like time-tracking applications only. Once you know what features work best for your business, make sure they’re included in the pricing structure before deciding which one is right for your team.
