The COVID-19 pandemic has shifted the way many enterprises think about work and where employees should reside for a number of reasons. With this paradigm change to hybrid and remote work, it is imperative that businesses are ensuring that both offsite employees and on-premises workers are completing tasks and assignments in a timely, efficient manner, and one way to guarantee this is happening is through use of employee monitoring software.
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Best employee monitoring software options
SentryPC
SentryPC is one of the top flight pieces of employee monitoring software for a number of reasons, but its ability to covertly allow those at management levels to track user activity makes it one of the premiere pieces of employee monitoring software. Through the use of its platform, SentryPC affords those in supervisor roles to remotely view what a particular user is viewing and even allow the supervisor to take screenshots of an employees’ screen to verify their work output. In addition, SentryPC is fairly affordable for those at the enterprise level, making it a popular option for businesses seeking to employ this type of software.
Price: Plans start at $59.95 per year
Teramind
Teramind is another piece of employee monitoring software with a stealth option, although based on cost, it may be more conducive to small to medium businesses than that of SentryPC. In addition to taking screenshots of employees’ work activity, Teramind can also record screen activity remotely and track everything from emails to individual keystrokes. Depending on the size of the business, however, Teramind may be better suited for organizations with a limited number of employees due to its ‘pay per endpoint’ pricing.
Price: Plans start at $10 per seat per month
ActivTrak
ActivTrak is one type of employee monitoring software that allows for timesheet tracking, a key component of organizations that use this type of software. Timesheet tracking is one of the basic features of many types of employee monitoring software, but ActivTrak is recommended for those working with remote employees to make sure their workforce is remaining logged in and engaged with assignments and tasks. ActivTrak’s platform is much like Teramind’s, in that it is priced per tracked user, although ActivTrak does offer a free option with some reduced capabilities.
Price: Options range from Free to Enterprise level
HubStaff
HubStaff also boasts the ability to keep up with individual employees and their timesheets, and the platform even compiles a report showing how much time has been spent on certain pages. These in-depth reports allow for those in executive positions to track employee hours, automate tracking for accurate employee timesheets and give employees intuitive mobile, desktop and web time tracking apps to assist with the timesheet tracking process. From a compensation perspective, this can also grant enterprises peace of mind when it comes to payroll when managing hourly employees, ensuring that revenue is being adequately distributed.
Price: Options range from Free to Enterprise level
iMonitorSoft
iMonitorSoft is one of the best pieces of employee monitoring software for making sure staff members are staying on task when at work. The iMonitor platform allows for organizations to track up to 1,000 computers from a single location. Another key piece of task management tracking is allowing executives to run up to ten different remote desktops simultaneously to monitor employees’ actions in real time and to even set notifications for organizations when employees are finished with certain tasks or alert supervisors to when employees are on certain websites.
Price: Visit website for pricing information
InterGuard
InterGuard is another type of employee monitoring software that has task management capabilities tied to alerts. These alerts can be sent to those in management roles via regularly scheduled emails, detailing what individual tasks are being worked on and how long employees have been working on them. The notification emails can also be color-coded and grouped to signify severity, allowing the emails to be viewed in order of how time-sensitive they are. In addition, InterGuard is useful for those working in specific roles that have to abide by policies such as HIPAA, as alerts can be sent to the organization when one of these policies has been deemed to be violated.
Price: Plans start at $9.99 per user per month
Veriato
Veriato is a premiere piece of employee monitoring software that affords organizations productivity evaluation reports. These reports can come either pre-configured or completely customizable based on the enterprises’ needs, with employee activity reports able to be viewed online in real time or sent at end of day via email. Finding the employees that are most productive can be beneficial in the short-term, but also in the long-term. These reports can be especially helpful when looking for those more suited for promotions or due compensation increases, while also showcasing employees that need to increase their productivity within the workforce.
Price: Plans differ based on system OS
Work Examiner
Work Examiner’s cloud-based productivity evaluations are also some of the best in the industry when it comes to tracking employees’ time spent on tasks. The Work Examiner platform comes with a robust number of statistics for each worker, and includes automatic tracking of productive and distracting activities, a productivity score for users and departments and productivity graphs and user activity ratio tracking. The ability to group both individuals and departments into the graphs that Work Examiner’s platform offers gives organizations the ability to verify that employees are making best use of their time and ease of use when sorting through a large enterprise’s number of workers.
Price: Plans start at $79.90 per user per year
VeriClock
VeriClock’s solution includes location management capabilities, permitting organizations to track where their employees are working from at any given time. This can be especially useful with the move to remote and hybrid environments in the wake of the pandemic. VeriClock’s platform includes GPS tagging to see where employees are clocking in and out from in real time, making it a popular option for enterprises with a number of different locations or courier and distribution services. This clock-in data is also time-stamped and geotagged, giving organizations proof of where and when an employee started and ended their shift each day.
Price: Plans start at $5 per user per month
Hourly
Hourly is another popular option for companies needing to verify the location of their employees. This is largely handled on the workers’ end through use of a mobile app, with employees opening the app on their phone and tapping the clock in to start the timer. Through use of Hourly’s app, organizations can enable GPS and geofencing settings to make sure workers are where they say, giving enterprises peace of mind when managing a number of remote employees at the same time. In addition, those in managerial positions can ensure that employees can only clock in once they’re in the correct place.
Price: Plans start at $6 per user per month
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Best employee monitoring software features
Each type of employee monitoring software has its pros when selecting a solution, based on the needs of the organization. Some businesses have several employees that work off-site or spend their days making deliveries, while others just need to make sure their employees are completing assignments in an efficient manner and making best use of their time on the clock. As always, it is up to the enterprises to find the type of software that best suits their specific requirements for managing their workforce.
Stealth tracking
Stealth tracking can be employed by organizations wanting to monitor the activities of their employees without indicating to the worker that it is doing so. By using stealth tracking, businesses can see all activity or time spent on different tasks but also see who within their personnel is productive or needs improvement without the notification that a manager is looking over their shoulder.
Timesheet tracking
Timesheet tracking is extremely useful for those who have freelance or hourly employees by ensuring that workers are engaged in an assignment for the length of time they say they are. Using this type of tracking can potentially save revenue if it is found that an employee is not actually performing their duties as expected and is just making it look like they are busy. In addition, with automated tracking capabilities, those in payroll can receive weekly reports indicating how much an employee should be compensated based on their time working on assignments or projects.
Task management
One of the more hands-on features when it comes to employee monitoring, task management can allow businesses to remotely monitor and control their employees’ devices while on the clock. In addition, many platforms offering task management capabilities can also block websites and even certain keywords if an organization deems it necessary. For enterprises looking to actively manage their workers’ activities, task management is the most effective way to do so when it comes to software features.
Productivity evaluation
For companies simply wanting a well thought out and assembled report, a few of the employee monitoring software solutions do just that. This can be especially useful when working with a large swath of workers, giving supervisors and managers detailed information about how long personnel took to complete projects and how many assignments were effectively completed in a certain period of time.
Location tracking
With many enterprises having delivery or courier services, ensuring that an employee is at a location can be crucial. Thankfully, there are a number of platforms allowing those in executive roles to monitor locations via GPS capabilities, ensuring that employees are where they say they are, and even assisting with timesheets by authenticating how long a worker was in an area.
What is employee monitoring software?
Employee monitoring software is a means of tracking employees through a variety of different methods. This allows those in administrative positions to monitor and supervise all their employee computers from a central location. Employee monitoring software is typically deployed over a number of different devices and allows for a centralized viewing of data and features via one networked PC.
Using this software, those in supervisory positions can automatically monitor what employees are working on or what software and websites have been used and visited on the company’s computers. Some can also identify and categorize if the software or the website in question falls within a deemed “productive” or “unproductive” category. This can provide those wishing to track employee productivity with a simplified, organized view of their daily history, allowing them to make decisions or determinations based on how much time is spent on a task or assignment by an employee.
How does employee monitoring software work?
A piece of employee monitoring software works through the installation of the program onto a PC or a set of PCs for remote viewing by the centralized administrative computer. Once installed, a variety of actions can be taken by the person in an admin role, from simply viewing what an employee is looking at or working on, to where they are working from. In addition, there are more active roles those in an administrative position can take, from restricting access to certain programs or websites, to even seeing if a removable drive has been placed into a device and what files have been transferred onto the removable drive. By recognizing which type of employee monitoring software best fits the needs of the organization, businesses can streamline the processes of their workforce to ensure that productivity is being maximized.
It is important to note that if a business is to employ more covert viewing features, such as stealth tracking, that the workforce may become weary or even suspicious of their employer’s reasons for doing so outside of just normal employee monitoring if the use of this feature is uncovered. This type of monitoring could be seen as invasive by employees, leading to lowered morale within the organization. It is imperative that businesses only employ the stealth viewing method if there are appropriate and necessary reasons for doing so.
Why is employee monitoring software important?
This type of employee tracking can be beneficial to organizations for a number of reasons. Namely, the move to offsite work due to the pandemic has left many businesses without a way to ensure that employees are spending their time on assignments and tasks as needed, rather than spending time on social media or leisure activities. There are a number of ways businesses can ensure that the time of its workforce is being properly allocated to completing duties, from tracking the location of a PC to remotely viewing an employee’s desktop and seeing what websites have been accessed.
In addition, this can lead to intellectual property of the company being more secure, as alerts can be received by those in admin positions if a worker was to transfer files off of a company server onto another device. Receiving these types of notifications can save an enterprise a large amount of time and money in trying to recoup this lost or stolen IP in the long run.
Another major reason for employing this type of software is to track which employees are more productive than others. This type of monitoring can provide managers with detailed information on who may be more suited for upper-level roles in the long run, if a track record of being efficient and capable can be demonstrated over a period of time using analytics to back up future hiring or compensation increases.