Recent studies have found that workers think they are more productive than ever before. On the surface, it makes sense. They have more time to concentrate on their work without distractions from water cooler chats, constant emails and the hellacious commute. But a lot of these surveys may be biased because many of us think we are productive, even though the data may present a slightly different story.
Therefore, business owners and employers must start tracking their workforce’s performance. From task management to web usage, there are plenty of metrics to use to determine if your employees are productive. But how do you achieve this? Employee monitoring software.
The market is full of software you can use to attain a better understanding of your staff. Because the market is vast, we have created an extensive list of 20 employee monitoring tools for your enterprise.
1. Time Doctor
Time Doctor is considered to be the gold standard of employee monitoring software. Let’s be honest: If your tool is being used by the likes of Apple, PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and Verizon, then you can’t go wrong! It has a treasure trove of features that can benefit all businesses embracing the telecommuting trend by employing several features:
- Simple time tracking
- Usage monitoring
- Inactivity tracker
- Advanced reports
- Projects and attendance reports
By utilising these functions, you can home in on monitoring attendance, the sites employees are visiting, the time spent on each task as well as the times they log in and out.
Time Doctor begins at $7 per month.
2. ActivTrak
When you’re using ActivTrak at the office, it is all about the data. The cloud-based programme concentrates on workplace productivity and analytics, incorporating a user activity monitoring platform that collects and analyses data. With this treasure trove of information, ActivTrak then offers actionable insights to allow businesses to better manage tasks, meetings and employee activity.
Overall, with its diverse array of tools, from workforce analytics to remote workforce management, you can attain a clear understanding of how work gets done, how employees manage their time, and what distractions are causing them to waste time.
There is a free version and a free trial but plans also start from $7.20 per month.
3. WorkTime
If you’re like many businesses today, you are probably trying to manage a company that is blending remote and in-office work. This can be difficult, and even frustrating when it comes to collaboration, management and perhaps productivity. But WorkTime attempts to alleviate the stress by allowing its employee, computer and internet monitoring software to boost productivity and ensure work is getting done.
How does WorkTime accomplish these goals? Its time tracking capabilities include automatic time capture, offline time tracking and an overtime calculator.
WorkTime does offer a free version and a free trial. Its premium plans start at $4.99 per month.
4. Hubstaff
Nobody will ever dispute the fact that it can be hard managing a remote workforce, especially if it is 100% online. That said, it is your responsibility to keep your staff engaged and on-task, which can be achieved with Hubstaff. This employee monitoring tool possesses a wide variety of features to help you keep track of everyone: time tracking, geofencing, online timesheets, GPS tracking and productivity measurement.
Hubstaff maintains four different plans, one of which is free, and the rest of which have a 14-day free trial and start at $7 per user per month.
5. Teramind
What makes Teramind stand out in the crowded remote staff monitoring market is not only its employee monitoring solutions but also its security apparatus and data protection mechanisms. With more than 2,000 users, from legal to energy to health care, Teramind’s features and capabilities have helped it rise to the top of the field. This software offers:
- User behaviour analytics
- Insider threat prevention
- Audit and compliance
- Data loss prevention
- User activity monitoring
Teramind also offers cloud-based and on-premises software. Both have three plans (seven-day free trial for the cloud and 14-day free trial for on-premises) starting from $60 per month per endpoint.
6. DataResolve
DataResolve goes above and beyond monitoring remote employees. The organisation possesses a long list of solutions to ensure that your staff members are working, but that the business is also being managed as a tight ship. For example, DataResolve’s features will determine if the employee is handling sensitive data at any given time and learn if personnel are violating corporate policies.
Its inDefend software safeguards intellectual property tracks remote workers, ensures industry compliance and offers insights with routine reporting.
Prices start at $100 per user per year.
7. Workpuls
Wouldn’t it be nice to have some insights into employees’ time spent on projects and tasks? Well, Workpuls has its finger on the pulse of staff members’ productive and unproductive activities by tracking time spent on applications and websites. The software also has a feature that lets you take screenshots.
Overall, here is what you can anticipate from the Workpuls platform:
- Automatic time capture
- Billing and invoicing
- Offline time-tracking
- Timesheet management
- Multiple billing rates
- Overtime calculator
Workpuls has four premium plans that are billed annually, starting from $4.80 per month.
8. SentryPC
SentryPC has expanded its expertise to the classroom and household. While it does offer its monitoring software for businesses, SentryPC allows customers to use its cloud control and real-time activity monitoring for personal usage, too. The software is separated into three primary categories:
- Activity monitoring
- Content filtering
- Time management
But these categories all share the same goal: higher productivity. These objectives are achieved with visual charts, Windows and Mac compatibility and user management.
SentryPC has six different pricing schemes, starting from $59.95 per year for a single license and going upwards to $4,995 per year for 1,000 licences.
9. Veriato
If you peruse any list of the most effective employee monitoring software around, Veriato usually ranks near the top. Why? The cloud-based application maintains a diverse array of tools and features to help you better manage your remote staff. Veriato enables you to keep an eye on:
- File movement
- App usage
- Instant messages
- Web searches
- Social media usage
- Website interaction
- Keylogger
- Real-time alerts
Plans start at $12.50 per month per device.
10. InterGuard
Do you want to monitor your off-site employees while enhancing your security? InterGuard assists you in this endeavour by implementing its four major categories into your overall corporate strategy:
- Monitor employee productivity
- Insider threat protection
- Website blocking and filtering
- Investigations and compliance
When you comb through the details of these four segments, you start to see that the functions are beneficial to all businesses - large and small: measure idle time, prevent data loss, remote incident response, cloud control, advanced blocking and session recordings.
Pricing begins at $9 per month per user with an annual contract.
11. StaffCop
Whether your business has dozens of computers or thousands of machines, StaffCop successfully allows you to monitor your team in real-time either on-site or remotely. What makes StaffCop unique is its intricate tracking that goes beyond screenshots and social media usage. For example, some of the top features in StaffCop’s repertoire include:
- Keystroke logging
- Social network monitoring
- Encoded traffic monitoring
- Search keyword tracking
- Block actions and access to devices
In addition to performance monitoring, StaffCop includes a data loss prevention mechanism.
You can either pay for a plan or a license. It also has different categories for business sizes. For smaller enterprises, it has four pricing plans, starting from $43 for one computer.
12. Work Examiner
Work Examiner is another employee monitoring solutions provider for both your remote workforce and your on-site employees. It should be noted that its cloud-based software is issued by a third-party source – Controlio – which is why a lot of users recommend utilising its on-premises application.
That said, Work Examiner maintains plenty of goodies from a single dashboard, from PC tracking to real-time screen capture to data leak prevention.
You can try Work Examiner free for 30 days before purchasing a license based on the number of computers you wish to monitor.
13. Toggl
If you don’t require extensive features, and you want the basics of time-tracking and remote monitoring, then Toggl is a good choice. Toggl is geared toward smaller businesses and entrepreneurs that maintains a simple user interface and rudimentary tracking features. From automated time-tracking to keyboard tracking, Toggl provides dozens of options to facilitate a productive online environment.
The company has three plans, starting from $9 per user per month. Indeed, there is a reason why the firm describes itself as ‘simple and beautiful’.
14. RescueTime
RescueTime is a bit different than some of the names on this list. RescueTime is not your typical time-tracking app; it is a web-based employee productivity platform that operates in the background. RescueTime tracks workers’ time spent on a website or tool during working hours and blocks websites that are determined to be too distracting. Moreover, RescueTime permits you to outline your productivity goals and informs you if you are spending too much time on a specific task.
RescueTime can also be integrated with 50 other project management systems and business communication apps, like Slack.
The business has two pricing plans: a basic free one and a premium that costs $9 per user per month.
15. Timely
Timely allows users to categorise their time based on tasks, tools used and websites visited. A lot of the features are automated, so Timely helps you reduce manual work. Plus, the service can gather data across web and mobile devices, which is beneficial for advanced reporting efforts.
Timely has three pricing plans, starting from $7 per month for freelancers and solopreneurs.
16. Harvest
You know, time-tracking isn’t always about ensuring your staff is not procrastinating. These types of programmes can be utilised to help minimise the monotonous work that comes with billing your huge number of clients.
Harvest is a time-tracking solution that has advanced invoicing functions, making it easier to bill when you have a lot of clients on your Rolodex. Harvest can create invoices from your internal data and then transfer these to third-party platforms, such as PayPal and Stripe, which is certainly convenient.
Harvest has two types of plans: free and $12 per user per month.
17. Everhour
Everhour is entirely web-based, and this is highly integral to its effectiveness. One of its primary selling points is its powerful life dashboard that allows you to examine your remote employees’ daily tasks. Plus, Everhour has other incredible features, such as editing time records, browser extensions and advanced billing for invoice creation.
Everhour has two price plans: one for individuals ($8 per month) and the other for businesses with full-time staff ($5 per user per month). It should be noted that these plans are billed annually.
18. Timeneye
Simple, automated and affordable. These can be used to describe Timeneye. It is a rudimentary app geared toward small businesses and solopreneurs, with time-tracking features, billing capabilities and detailed reports about each staff member’s time usage. Its easy-to-use interface makes it an attractive app when you do not have the time or the know-how to utilise other in-depth solutions.
In addition to a free plan for individuals, Timeneye has prices that vary based on the number of full-time employees on your team. So, for example, if you have five users on your team, you will pay $24 monthly.
19. ClickTime
ClickTime is a sublime time-tracking tool that helps you take care of your projects and manage your resources. What makes ClickTime worth the effort is that you can generate a barrage of reports to have tremendous insights into your workforce, allowing you to measure employee performance, workforce productivity and task allocation. While you do need some level of technical expertise, it’s worth considering its detailed mechanisms on offer.
ClickTime has three pricing schemes which start from $10 per user per month.
20. TopTracker
Are you a freelancer or a small organisation? Whatever your situation might be, TopTracker is a multifunctional time-tracking app to afford you better time-tracking capabilities, whether it is for yourself or your team. What’s more, this desktop app is suitable for Windows, Mac, Fedora and Linux.
The one setback is that much of it is manual as there is very little automation. But it is free to use!
It's safe to say that telecommuting is here to stay in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic. This requires companies to manage a virtual workforce. Many businesses – large and small – will adopt remote work and shift to an off-site strategy. While some industries still require a centralised on-site location, a lot of positions can be achieved from the comfort of a kitchen or living room.
For employers, it has become imperative to enable this shift by installing remote employee monitoring software. This way, you can not only ensure that your business is progressing nicely, but also that your employees are fulfilling the tasks that they are paid to perform.