Employee Monitoring Software is a tool that is helpful in maintaining the records of the employees in a company. This software helps an organization to keep an eye on the online behaviour of employees when at work. The Internet plays a crucial role in the proper functioning of each and every organization. However, an employee, during the work hours, might fall prey to the distractions present on the internet. This might lead to unproductivity, failure and might even pose risk to the organization’s security. In order to prevent and deal with the aforementioned issues, Employee Monitoring Software is the way to go! They offer services like web browsing tracking, application and email monitoring, keystrokes tracking, accessing the devices’ cameras, and much more.
Various factors combine together to help you select the best employee monitoring software. This buyer’s guide will help you calculate business requirements and choose the right software.
» What is the meaning of employee monitoring?
» What is Employee Monitoring Software?
» What are the Best Employee Monitoring Software?
» Is it worth investing in Employee Monitoring Software?
» Before you choose any Employee Monitoring Software
» What are the key features of Employee Monitoring Software
» What are the Key Benefits of Employee Monitoring Software
» How to choose the best Employee Monitoring Software
» Questions to ask a vendor when buying Employee Monitoring Software
» What is the Pricing of Employee Monitoring Software
» Conclusion
» What is the meaning of employee monitoring?
Employee monitoring denotes a rapidly increasing practice adopted by companies to monitor employee performance, work, and the tasks in progress. Companies do this through a variety of digital tools. Employee monitoring is a broad term involving everything from attendance tracking to behavior assessments to productivity evaluation to security enforcement to proof of work collection to complete surveillance.
» What is Employee Monitoring Software?
Employee Monitoring Software allows companies to check the activities of their employees by monitoring application usage, as well as any other activities. This software keeps track of the employee’s computer activities, without breaking the employee's privacy. This software works in the background and automatically records comprehensive data about the employee’s work activities with the computer.
The recorded data helps to analyze the productivity level, employee attendance, software and internet usages, and many more. These are powerful applications that even keep track of the keystrokes made by the employees on the keyboard.
What are the Best Employee Monitoring Software?
List of Top Employee Monitoring Software | Free & Paid
1. Rippling
» About Rippling:
Rippling, with its efficient set of features and simple functionality, makes it easier for you to keep a tab on your employees. Whether it is tracking your employees’ attendance, working hours, or overtime, you can do it all with this employee monitoring system. It also lets you manage employee payroll from its centralized platform. If that wasn’t all, you could also monitor the devices & apps they use, along with their activity & tasks they are working on, at any given time. That helps you maximize your processes significantly.
» Starting Price
› $8 per user/month
» Rippling Employee Monitoring Features:
- Alerts/Notifications
- Online Screen Monitoring
- Alerts/Notifications
- Screen Activity Recording
- Time Tracking
- Productivity Analysis
- Remote Control
- Keystroke Recording
» Capterra: 4.9/5 » G2crowd: 4.8/5 » GetApp: 4.9/5
“Rippling’s platform looks like an iPhone. It’s easy to figure out where to go and how to use it—but it’s really powerful, too.”
- Craig Shapiro / Controller at Beam Dental
2. Hubstaff
» About Hubstaff:
One of the best in the market, Hubstaff provides an organization with the ability to keep track of the progress of work as it happens, without disturbing the employees. Employees can choose the task and set the timer on. The timer stops automatically when the employee stops working. It is available on devices supporting Android and Mac.
» Starting Price
› $5.00/month/user ($5 a user per month)
» Hubstaff Employee Monitoring Features:
- Employee Activity Monitoring
- Productivity Analysis
- Screen Activity Recording
- Browsing History
- Time Tracking
» Capterra: 4.6/5 » G2crowd: 4.4/5 » GetApp: 4.6/5
“Hubstaff is a great tool for businesses that operate remotely because it gives accountability to employees and streamlined tracking capabilities for the managers.”
- Tyler Nimmons / Creative Director & CEO, Front Runner Films
3. ActivTrak
» About ActivTrak:
ActivTrak is a cloud-based analytics service that helps businesses gain insights into employee productivity. It can be easily installed on an employee’s desktop to track activity. It provides aggregate data on a company’s day-to-day performance. Data transfer is encrypted, thus, ensuring privacy and security.
» Starting Price
› $7.20/month/user (Learn more at https://activtrak.com/pricing/)
» ActivTrak Employee Monitoring Features:
- Employee Activity Monitoring
- Productivity Analysis
- Screen Activity Recording
- Browsing History
- Employee Email Monitoring
- Remote Control
- Time Tracking
» Capterra: 4.6/5 » G2crowd: 4.4/5 » GetApp: 4.6/5
“ActivTrak is a powerful tool for businesses. You can watch live the efficiency of every employee, if and were their are wasting their time on internet and very discreet. You have all the data in a simple web page with a lot of option and statistics for every user.”
- Richard R.
4. DeskTime
» About DeskTime:
DeskTime provides a timestamp for an employee’s arrival and departure. It tracks total time spent on work-related tasks and calculates productivity automatically. It can help in sorting productive and unproductive URLs and applications. Auto screenshots and activity rate trackers provide an idea of the project status. It also helps in comparing the effectiveness and performance of the team and get insights on the extra hours spent.
» Starting Price
› $3.85/month/user (LITE version is Free. Pricing plans start at $7/user and go as low as $3.85)
» DeskTime Employee Monitoring Features:
- Employee Activity Monitoring
- Productivity Analysis
- Screen Activity Recording
- Time Tracking
» Capterra: 4.3/5 » G2crowd: 4.6/5 » GetApp: 4.3/5
“As all of our staff work remotely, having DeskTime to monitor their activities has proved to be an invaluable tool in ensuring that people are doing what they are supposed to. I love the fact that I don't have to worry about keeping track of my hours as Desktime does it all for me. I also enjoy the articles written by the contributors.”
- Cate Wheatley / Customer Relations Manager at ConnexCS
5. BrowseReporter
» About BrowseReporter:
BrowseReporter is a computer monitoring software that provides data-driven insights into how users are engaging with the internet and computer applications on company devices. CurrentWare customers use BrowseReporter to monitor the internet use of employees, capture evidence of technology misuse, and generate data-driven reports for employee productivity coaching. BrowseReporter operates from a centralized console, allowing administrators to easily configure monitoring policies based on users, devices, departments, and other organizational units.
» BrowseReporter Employee Monitoring Features:
- Employee Activity Monitoring
- Productivity Analysis
- Screen Activity Recording
- Browsing History
- Time Tracking
» Capterra: 4.3/5 » G2crowd: 5/5 » GetApp: 4.3/5
“BrowseReporter provides comprehensive reports that helps me keep track of my employees web browsing activities. It's easy to use and setup.”
- Stanley K. / IT Director
6. Monitask
» About Monitask:
Monitask delivers employee monitoring solutions to boost productivity, efficiency, and accountability across your team. Advanced screenshot and activity monitors, as well as time tracking capabilities, keep teams focused on the task at hand. Our software is powerful, yet lightweight, making it simple and easy to use. Managers can also access their dashboard on any of their devices to keep track of their team anytime, anywhere.
» Starting Price
› $4.99/month/user
» Monitask Employee Monitoring Features:
- Employee Activity Monitoring
- Productivity Analysis
- Screen Activity Recording
- Browsing History
- Time Tracking
» Capterra: 4.8/5 » G2crowd: 1.5/5 » GetApp: 4.8/5
“I tried a couple of different time tracking softwares and they all missed some of the features that I liked, Monitask has them all. I really like all the different personalizations you can do, it's cool that you can have different settings for different team members.”
- Dubravka V. / Senior Manager
7. Kickidler
» About Kickidler:
Kickidler is Employee Monitoring and Time Tracking Software. It shows computer screens of all the employees of your company in real-time. The software records video with action of all the employees. It permits to analyze working time efficiency, generates detailed reports and stores a history of violations. Moreover, Kickidler gives you the opportunity to control company’s computers remotely.
» Starting Price
› $9.99/month/user (Per year - 50 $ Lifetime - 170 $)
» Kickidler Employee Monitoring Features:
- Alerts/Notifications
- Online Screen Monitoring
- Alerts/Notifications
- Screen Activity Recording
- Time Tracking
- Productivity Analysis
- Remote Control
- Keystroke Recording
» Capterra: 4.7/5 » G2crowd: 4.9/5 » GetApp: -
“Having purchased Kickidler user activity tracking program, we’ve reduced labor input required for the analysis of employee behavior. At the same time all employees’ actions became transparent.”
- Max T. / CIO, Logistics and Supply Chain
8. Remotedesk
» About Remotedesk:
RemoteDesk (powered by Verificient Technologies, Inc.) is the only automated monitoring solution that continuously secures the identities of remote work-at-home agents and delivers the Clean Desk Environment. Remotedesk’s elegant and simple AI technology securely monitors remote workers while providing clear transparency, accountability, work-at-home policy compliance and risk management for outsourcing initiatives.
» Starting Price
› $10/month/user
» Remotedesk Employee Monitoring Features:
- Alerts/Notifications
- Employee Activity Monitoring
- Idle Time Monitoring
- Keystroke Recording
- Productivity Analysis
- Screen Activity Recording
- Time Tracking
» Capterra: - » G2crowd: - » GetApp: -
“Remotedesk empowered us to gain access to a wider pool of legal talent with highly-specialized skill-sets that’s hard to find. Not only did we reconciled over-reporting, we reclaimed lost under-reported billable hours, as well.”
- Dan Klier / Bicoastal Legal
9. Time Doctor
» About Time Doctor:
Time Doctor helps in tracking the websites and applications that an employee uses. Real-time screenshots are taken in order to check what an employee is working on. It has a feature of reminding the employees to work on their projects in case they are found spending most of their time elsewhere.
» Starting Price
› $5.00/month/user (Free 30-day trial Free plan $5.00/Solo per month $9.99/User per month)
» Time Doctor Employee Monitoring Features:
- Employee Activity Monitoring
- Productivity Analysis
- Screen Activity Recording
- Browsing History
- Keystroke Recording
- Time Tracking
» Capterra: 4.6/5 » G2crowd: 4.3/5 » GetApp: 4.6/5
“TimeDoctor is a fantastic time tracking tool which is ideal for tracking time for an employee or a remote freelancer. It does a lot more than just time tracking. Some of the native features of the app includes chat monitoring, screenshot captures, payroll and payments. There are many third party integration available with popular apps such as Slack, Trello, Github etc. which makes it more feature rich and flexible. A must have tool for employers looking to effectively track productivity of their employees.”
- Manish Patel / Pandia
10. Workstatus
» About Workstatus:
Workstatus automates the process of capturing employees’ attendance. It enables employees to automatically clock in and clock out by using selfie verification technology. Idle time tracker and active screenshots give a fair idea of the progress of any task. It also helps you to calculate productive and unproductive working hours spent on any project. Its productivity calculator helps you to track and improve the performance of the team by providing insightful reports and analytics.
» Starting Price
› The premium plan starts at ₹199 / user/month (A free version is available. Learn more at https://www.workstatus.io/pricing ).
» Workstatus Employee Monitoring Features:
- URL & Website Tracking
- Leave Management
- User Activity Monitoring
- Selfie Validation
- Productivity Analysis
- Online Timesheets
- Project Budgeting
» Capterra: 0/5 » G2crowd: 4.7/5 » GetApp: 0/5
“With Workstatus, I have been able to see which tasks are taking up too much time and make adjustments to increase efficiency. I can monitor my team's work without micromanaging. It's made a huge difference in productivity.”
- Jon Mathew
11. Apploye
» About Apploye:
Apploye provides a robust employee monitoring platform helpful for small and large teams. It offers time tracking and payroll management too. Random screenshots, activity monitoring, GPS tracker, apps & website tracking are the most important monitoring features. With powerful reports, you may create a transparent workflow with your clients. It also eases the HR and admin to oversee each employee's activity.
» Starting Price
› $4.00/month (Pricing Model:Per User)
» Apploye Employee Monitoring Features:
- Alerts/Notifications
- Employee Activity Monitoring
- Productivity Analysis
- Screen Activity Recording
- Browsing History
- Keystroke Recording
- Time Tracking
» Capterra: 4.9/5 » G2crowd: 4.7/5 » GetApp: 4.9/5
“Straightforward, Easy to use. If you want to manage your staff onsite or remotely and get productivity reports – then Apploye should be one of those apps that you need to try!”
- Kernan Motoomull
12. Teramind
» About Teramind:
Teramind UAM, apart from the basic employee tracking functionalities, offers additional intelligent behaviour-based analysis. It provides actionable insight and automated responses to employee-generated threats. It captures violations and takes necessary actions (alert, stop, clock, etc). It also measures employee productivity, risk analysis and prevents unauthorized data transfer. It can accurately point out the offenders with digital footprints as proof.
» Starting Price
› $12.00/month/user (Pricing is on a subscription basis. Volume discounting is available.)
» Teramind Employee Monitoring Features:
- Alerts/Notifications
- Employee Activity Monitoring
- Idle Time Monitoring
- Productivity Analysis
- Screen Activity Recording
- Browsing History
- Employee Email Monitoring
- Keystroke Recording
- Remote Control
- Time Tracking
» Capterra: 4.7/5 » G2crowd: 4.3/5 » GetApp: 4.6/5
“The ability to monitor and track with a variety of useful tools the approach and actions of employees with sensitive information. The option to set alerts and actions automatically when violating information security rules by an employee. It is excellent, saves resources and enables control and peace of mind with sensitive information. Receiving an indication of working time on different software enables me and the CEO to monitor employee productivity, along with an examination of the efficiency of the software with which they work. These tools allows me to detect waste of time by employees and wasting company resources.”
- Yakir D.
13. ProProfs Employee Training Software
» About ProProfs Employee Training Software:
ProProfs Employee Training Software is a cloud learning management system designed for training employees, both in-house and remotely. It is easy to use and full-featured. Course authoring, assessment, automated grading, and certification are among the top functionalities of the tool. It is hosted in the cloud and so users don’t have to worry about software download and installation. As an award-winning tool, ProProfs employee training software encourages some of the best practices in employee training to drive the best results. Both instructors and learners can access the platform on a preferred device.
» Starting Price
› $59
» ProProfs Employee Training Software Features:
- Design & Brand
- Learning Management
- Anywhere Access
- Anytime Access
- Measure Knowledge
- Simple & Easy
- Share Knowledge
» Capterra: 4.8/5 » G2crowd: 4.1/5 » GetApp: 4.8/5
“I can safely recommend ProProfs to any of our customers requiring competency or compliance testing in multiple languages, or need an instant online assessment tool with kick-ass database capabilities!”
- Steve Donaldson / Assistant Director of Media Training, IPC Training
14. Handdy
» About Handdy:
Handdy software helps you in accurately tracking employees' working hours on a day to day basis. You will also be able to monitor the following activities of your employees: Keystrokes made, Applications accessed, Websites used, Capture screenshots. All the data will be saved as a visual report which can be easily export. You can track billable and nonbillable hours of your employees and can use these timesheets to bill your clients directly.
» Starting Price
› $1.72/user
» Handdy Features:
- Alerts/Notifications
- Browsing History
- Employee Activity Monitoring
- Idle Time Monitoring
- Keystroke Recording
- Productivity Analysis
- Screen Activity Recording
- Time Tracking
» Capterra: 4.7/5 » G2crowd: 5/5 » GetApp: 4.7/5
“We have moved all our staff to work from home after the COVID situation. We needed a tool to measure our staff tasks and monitor while they work from home. We also needed consolidated reports at the end of each week. Handdy is ideal solution for our use.”
- Trifecta Medical
15. StaffCop
» About StaffCop:
StaffCop Enterprise is on-permise software system that makes your business safe and secure. StaffCop provides a unique, fully integrated solution that focuses on detection and response to insider threats through a combination of advanced behavioral analysis and context-rich logging of insider activity. StaffCop Enterprise is an application based on client-server architecture which allows to monitor all the user activity on workstations, system events and information channels.
» StaffCop Employee Monitoring Features:
- Employee Activity Monitoring
- Productivity Analysis
- Screen Activity Recording
- Browsing History
- Employee Email Monitoring
- Keystroke Recording
- Remote Control
- Time Tracking
» Capterra: 5/5 » G2crowd: - » GetApp: -
“Reliable and robust staff monitoring solution. Clear, concise instructions make it easy to work without conflicting with antivirius Feature rich. Great for monitoring activities but reporting is also excellent. Easy to mange, monitor and install”
- Ben J. / Projects Admin
16. DeskTrack
» About DeskTrack:
Automated Desktop Monitoring Tool which records the insight details of the team’s work with the time spent on URLs browsed, applications, and files opened, projects, and tasks are done. It identifies the actual work we did & distractions faced all through the day.
» DeskTrack Employee Monitoring Features:
- Employee Activity Monitoring
- Productivity Analysis
- Screen Activity Recording
- Browsing History
- Employee Email Monitoring
- Time Tracking
» Capterra: 4.2/5 » G2crowd: - » GetApp: 4.2/5
“Great Software. It gave you complete visibility in terms of who is doing what? even you can track file-level timesheets. it's good software and recommends you to try it once.”
- Vivek Jindal
17. Insightful
» About Insightful:
Insightful is a workforce productivity and analytics software on a mission to help companies improve the benchmark performance, productivity, and efficiency of their employees. Thanks to real-time visibility and relevant insights that Insightful provides, companies of all sizes – from small teams to large, enterprise organizations – can better optimize how their teams work, no matter where they are located.
» Insightful Employee Monitoring Features:
- Employee Activity Monitoring
- Productivity Analysis
- Screen Activity Recording
- Browsing History
- Time Tracking
» Capterra: 4.8/5 » G2crowd: 4.8/5 » GetApp: 4.8/5
“The All-in-One application that streamlines day-to-day operations to manage productivity better. Tracks every instance of your employee which is great for having coaching & feedback sessions.”
- Rohit Tinku / Sales Manager at Noon Dalton
18. Veriato Cerebral
» About Veriato Cerebral:
Veriato Cerebral offers cloud and on-premise services for employee tracking. It provides scheduled productivity reports, precise active working hours of employees and protection against data theft. It also records chats, emails, downloads, etc for analysis.
» Veriato Cerebral Employee Monitoring Features:
- Employee Activity Monitoring
- Productivity Analysis
- Screen Activity Recording
- Browsing History
- Employee Email Monitoring
- Keystroke Recording
- Remote Control
- Time Tracking
» Capterra: 4.3/5 » G2crowd: 1.3/5 » GetApp: 2/5
“The software is very affordable compared to similar products on the market that are quite expensive. The user interface is easy to navigate, and the information provided on potential employee threats is outstanding. I have recommended Veriato Recon and Veriato 360 to my 500+ clients. Many have purchased Veriato products and are quite please with both products.”
- Jim H. / CEO, Insider Threat Program Development-Management Training Course Instructor
19. SentryPC
» About SentryPC:
SentryPC shows how an employee is using the computer. It can block access to various sites, applications, games, and messengers. Activity monitoring, content filtering, and time management are the sectors this software specializes in. It also has a cloud-based control, both windows and MAC compatibility, detailed logs, charts, alerts and much more.
» Starting Price
› $59.95/year/user
» SentryPC Employee Monitoring Features:
- Employee Activity Monitoring
- Screen Activity Recording
- Browsing History
- Employee Email Monitoring
- Keystroke Recording
- Remote Control
- Time Tracking
» Capterra: 3/5 » G2crowd: 5/5 » GetApp: 3/5
“I never imagined this would be soo easy to use… I was setup and monitoring my employees in no time!”
- Donald T.
20. InterGuard
» About InterGuard:
InterGuard tracks and helps in searching recorded data to view logs and screenshots of an employee’s activities. Productivity monitoring, insider threat detection, employee investigations are some of the services this software offers. User Behavior Analytics (UBA) helps in identifying any sort of disturbance occurring in the workforce. One of the most unique features of InterGuard is that it can be used even if the device is not connected to the internet. This is possible as the software is installed at the endpoint and thus, monitoring is always on and very reliable.
» Starting Price
› $9.00/month/user (InterGuard offers both monthly and annual licensing.)
» InterGuard Employee Monitoring Features:
- Alerts/Notifications
- Employee Activity Monitoring
- Idle Time Monitoring
- Productivity Analysis
- Screen Activity Recording
- Browsing History
- Employee Email Monitoring
- Keystroke Recording
- Remote Control
- Time Tracking
» Capterra: 4.1/5 » G2crowd: 4.3/5 » GetApp: 4/5
“Easy for us to use and quick with details need to find out who isn't a productive member of our team. The moment you sign on you will see who or what department you need to watch the most, after making adjustments to your allowed list you will see an improvement in team performance. Time thieves are caught red-handed.”
- Tymeshia K. / Office Manager
21. EmpMonitor
» About EmpMonitor:
EmpMonitor enables an organization to remotely track and access activities of an employee instantly. It specializes in increasing productivity, graphical reports, data security, stealth operation and much more. Auto screenshots and attendance management are also available for an organization to keep track of its employee’s activities.
» Starting Price
› $5.00/month/user (5$/user/month(For 1 to 10 users) to 3$/user/month (For 51 to 200 users)
» EmpMonitor Employee Monitoring Features:
- Alerts/Notifications
- Employee Activity Monitoring
- Idle Time Monitoring
- Productivity Analysis
- Screen Activity Recording
- Browsing History
- Keystroke Recording
- Remote Control
- Time Tracking
» Capterra: 5/5 » G2crowd: - » GetApp: -
“Overall EmpMonitor has been a really great tool. It helped me improve my productivity a lot which in turn bodes well with my client's work.”
- Richard C. / Web Designer
» Is it worth investing in Employee Monitoring Software?
Employee monitoring is a method of monitoring the activities of the employees, which is used by the companies to prevent and/or detect the data breaches and other legal risks. It helps to boost employee performance and improve the efficiency of the workflow based processes. It plays a key role in monitoring remote workers.
By using the best employee monitoring software, companies can mitigate the risk of data breaches and legal risks, and thus increase the profitability of the company. Data gathered can be analyzed to understand the business process workflows, and improve their performances.
Employee Monitoring Software gives an insight into how the work is getting done both inside and outside the company. One can analyze which applications are getting used the most, understand the unproductive hours, and unproductive tasks.
The reports available from the employee monitoring software can be used for comparative studies between two teams. These reports can break down the data as to why one team is more productive than the other, what are the improvements needed in the process workflow to increase the idle time. This also provides details as to what part of the day is more productive for the team or an individual employee, so that important work can be assigned during that period of time to the team or employee.
» Before you choose any Employee Monitoring Software
Employee Monitoring Software tracks almost all the activities the employee performs on the computer, right from the keystrokes to the internet sites visited. The company needs to be aware of what level of monitoring it needs to track from their employees.
Employee monitoring does not violate employee privacy. Hence it’s important that the companies understand these intricacies and educate the employees as well about this. All the teams and the employees need to be aware that such monitoring software is present on their system which is tracking all the activities.
Similar to other software, even for employee monitoring, there are a number of software available in the market. Each software offers different features and comes with different pricing options. Make a list of top Software offering employee monitoring applications and study them thoroughly. Try to match your requirements with the offered features, and study which software can solve most of the problems for which you are looking out for this software.
Pricing will always be an issue, so try to fix the budget that your company is willing to spend on this software. These days there are many SaaS (Cloud) based Software available which can be tried for an initial trial period. It is always a good option to try this trial period to check out the features and finalize it.
» What are the key features of Employee Monitoring Software?
Technology is changing so fast that these days the work is not just happening inside the office but in various other locations, including Homes. Work from home has become so common these days. Also, the devices used for working have increased from desktop computers to laptops and handheld devices (like mobile phones and tablets).
To catch up to these trends, Employee Monitoring Software offers different features.
› Internet and Emails monitoring:
The Internet is one of the most essential things for getting things done faster, as long as it is used appropriately and efficiently. Internet tracking captures the URLs, title bars, and the time spent on each site. The basic idea is to check how the internet is being used in the workplace and to check if anything can be improved to make the process work in a better way.
Emails are the most popular communication channels in almost all companies. Emails are considered to be official documents by Law. So it becomes very important for companies to monitor official emails to reduce the risk of litigation and other disasters.
› Computer Activities:
Like Internet monitoring, this feature will track the applications running on the local desktop or laptops. The data collected can be used to analyze how productive the time has been spent, which applications are used the most, and where the unproductive time was spent on.
› Keystroke logging:
This would record each and every key pressed by the employee in a sequential manner. This feature is very sensitive and needs to be used only in places where a very high level of monitoring is needed. There could be instances where this could lead to invasion of privacy of the employees as the employees could be keying in some sensitive data about their social security number, bank accounts, and/or even password.
› Telephone:
Tracking the telephone calls is very common in the service sectors where the help desk is working closely with the customers in helping and solving the issues. The standard message which tells that the calls might be monitored for quality purpose is one common place where we have seen telephone monitoring. This monitoring will help to improve customer service and also to train the employees. This also provides the audit log about the conversation which has happened between the customer care person and the customer.
› GPS Tracking:
This can be used for tracking and monitoring the company’s assets like delivery cars, mobile phones, laptops. This could help in navigation, recover the stolen or the missing equipment, and for safety purposes.
› Dashboards:
The software would provide business intelligence-enabled dashboards which helps in understanding the productivity, suggest the unproductive business areas, viewing the top performers of the team, as well as top websites and applications used.
› Reports Generation:
Reports are one important feature that comes out of the box from any monitoring software. They provide logs that give insights into every activity in graphs and charts format. The top list of websites that are visited recently can be viewed in the graphical format. Also, it would provide the history from the past 6-8 months as well. Similarly, the top applications used recently and also history can be viewed.
› Cloud-Based:
Many recent software offer SaaS or Cloud-based applications. All the data collected will be stored in the cloud and can be accessed from anywhere and anytime.
› Screenshots:
The monitoring software has features to take the screenshots of the employee screen at the predefined intervals. This helps in understanding the work patterns of the employees and also analyzes the time getting consumed on various applications. This can also help in understanding if the team member is stuck at any particular point in the workflow, which can be addressed to speed up the process going forward.
› IP Whitelisting:
This is one of the unique features of a few software vendors. The list of IP addresses can be listed as safe and can be added to the whitelisting. This will eliminate the risk of data loss and data breach.
» What are the Key Benefits of Employee Monitoring Software?
When implemented in an effective manner, employee monitoring software can help the company in many ways.
› Effective Management:
By studying the data collected from the software system, you will be able to build a more efficient team. Information can highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the employees. Understanding where people struggle and where they do good, will help in delegating the right work. Also, this will help in organizing the required training for the employees, to enable them to make use of the tools more efficiently. All these would lead to better career growth for the employees and a more satisfied team.
› Engaging the Team:
The data from monitoring software can be studied to understand if the employees are getting engaged completely with the work they are getting assigned to. If the Employees feel that they are not engaged to their fullest, then it would lead to disconnect within the team. Getting the best out of an employee is not possible until he/she is engaged with the job and gives 100%.
Studying the behavioral patterns would help in seeing who is engaged completely and who is kind of disconnected. Management can take some time and talk to those employees to understand what is missing and try to provide more challenging work for them to get the best out of them.
› Financial Growth:
Unproductive time leads to loss of revenue. Implementing the best employee monitoring software can help in identifying the reasons for the unproductive time from the team. The reasons for unproductiveness could be many. The simple delay in a process workflow could also be leading to idle time within the team. Such delays need to be addressed soon. A 100% productive team will always lead to good utilization and in turn, leads to the financial growth of an organization.
› Security and Safety:
Safety and security is the most important concern for any company these days. Hackers are becoming more and more intelligent, and an equally strong system needs to be in place to prevent hacking. Monitoring systems will track the employees browsing activities and email spams. They can proactively prevent the employees by not visiting or opening phishing emails and websites.
› Data Breaching:
Tracking employee activities will prevent any malicious activities occurring in the system. Data can be compromised in various ways, and there should be a strong mechanism in preventing this.
» How to choose the best Employee Monitoring Software?
There are a number of software vendors who offer world-class employee monitoring software. It is important to understand the needs of the company first before shortlisting the software. Once the requirements are listed down, try to shortlist the top few software who offer the features which can meet your company’s requirement.
The new software should be easy to use. It should have very less lead time to get it implemented and start using it. The Software vendor should be offering a good support model for the software. There should be 24/7 support to ensure the software is up and running all the time.
Employee activity monitoring should be implemented very carefully, as this might lead to a privacy breach of the employees. All the legal part needs to be addressed completely before this is rolled out to the teams.
With the above factors being considered, select the best available software which suits the best for your company’s needs.
» Questions to ask a vendor when buying Employee Monitoring Software
1. Does your employee monitoring software facilitate the tracking of employee activities in real-time?
2. How does your product ensure there is fairness in the workspace?
3. What kind of monitoring will this product bring to the table?
4. In what ways will the solution optimize my current processes?
5. How will it help reduce my admin burden?
6. Does it have the functionality to keep employees engaged?
7. Will the solution synchronize employee time-offs?
8. Is it capable of tracking time?
9. How does it alert when violations take place?
10. Will your product be able to monitor my remote and contractual employees too?
11. Will it be easier enough to transition to this system?
12. Is your product user-friendly?
13. How long would be the learning curve?
14. What is the duration of the installation?
15. Is this software flexible to scale to the demands of an expanding business?
16. Is the system robust to handle monitoring of all the employees for a business stature as mine?
17. Will I require to alter my business operations in any way?
18. Is the software platform-independent?
19. Does it work across devices?
20. Have you served in my niche before?
21. How rapidly will I get help if there are glitches?
22. Is an SLA in place to tackle support-related services and assurance?
23. Can the product easily integrate with other APIs and tools?
24. What will be the status of the privacy and safety of my data?
25. Do you offer personalization of the software?
26. Will the system provide me with reports and data insights?
27. Is there any hidden cost?
» What is the Pricing of Employee Monitoring Software
There are many software vendors who offer the best employee monitoring software. The pricing does vary based on the features offered. These days the cloud-enabled software is more popular as they offer pay as you use.
Many vendors offer free versions of the software with limited features. It is advisable to first try these free versions to examine the software capabilities and usage features.
The paid version would vary anywhere from 3$/user/month to $10/user/month. Again the price variation is based on the features which are offered in every package.
There is monitoring software which can be installed in-house (on-prem model) as well. This would come with an additional cost of maintenance and not so popular in the present days.
» Conclusion
Employee Monitoring Software is one of the most powerful and popular software which is being used by many companies across the globe. It helps to safeguard your business from corporate frauds, hacking, and phishing. They provide detailed reports on the user log, the websites visited and the applications used in interactive graph and chart format.
Employee Monitoring Software helps in boosting the performance of the team and employees by monitoring the employees’ productive and non-productive activities. It also helps in improving the process workflows by calculating the idle time of the employees.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What is employee monitoring software?
You can easily keep track of your employees’ computer activity from a central location with the help of employee monitoring software. By monitoring your employees’ activity, you can easily improve productivity and protect your corporate resources. The software help companies to prevent and detect data breaches.
What are the main features of employee monitoring software?
- Real-time employee tracking
- Screenshot monitoring
- Screen activity recording
- Browsing history
- Timesheet
- Productivity evaluation
- Location tracking
- Employee email monitoring
- Task management
- Alerts & notifications
- Remote desktop control
- Mobility
What are the benefits of employee monitoring software?
- Improved productivity
- Improved employee performance
- Reduced administration cost
- Cost-effective & time saving
- Real-time monitoring
- Advanced analytics
- Enhanced data security
What is the best software for employee monitoring?
- Hubstaff
- ActivTrak
- DeskTime
- BrowseReporter
- Time Doctor
- Teramind
- Workpuls
- Veriato Cerebral
- SentryPC
- InterGuard
- EmpMonitor
How much does an employee monitoring software cost?
The software can begin around $3.85/month/user to $12.00/month/user.