The Best Employee Monitoring Software

1. What is Employee Monitoring Software?

Employee monitoring software (also known as employee productivity or performance monitoring software) is used by companies to track their employees' work activities. It’s the most reliable and efficient way of keeping track of both your in-office and remote teams’ work hours.

You can use the data generated by the software to assess employee productivity, track billable hours, manage shifts, etc.

But it’s not just a tool for tracking employees’ working hours. The best tools available today will help you do much more.

For instance, powerful employee-friendly monitoring software like Time Doctor helps you:

• Discover actionable insights and employee performance trends to boost productivity.
• Encourage your team to focus on their tasks.
• Take screencasts of your employees’ screens at specified intervals.
• See which apps and websites your employees use the most during work hours.
• Generate accurate payroll and process invoices.
• And so much more.

This way, employee monitoring software gives companies an overall picture of how employees are performing. Employers can then use this data to improve team productivity and efficiency.

2. How Employee Monitoring Software Helps Successful Companies 

Workers spend just 27% of their day on skill-based tasks — in an eight-hour day, that’s just over 2 hours a day! Such time wastage is one of the biggest hurdles to growth for ambitious entrepreneurs and managers.

To run a productive and profitable company, you need to ensure that each team member performs at their best. Monitoring their work activities is the easiest way to do that.

After all, each employee has a vital role in ensuring that the company runs like a well-oiled machine. If just one part comes loose, it can negatively affect the entire organization.

And while monitoring employees throughout the workday can be pretty challenging in the modern remote, hybrid, and flexible work settings, employee monitoring software makes it a piece of cake.

With the right tool, you can ensure employees aren’t wasting away their working hours on social media, pretending to be busy, or distorting their timesheets!

3. How does Employee Monitoring Help Employees be More Productive?

Here are three ways in which employee monitoring help employees boost productivity:

A. Employers can access actionable productivity insights.

Business owners and managers can use time tracking data to identify how much time an employee takes on each task. This helps them recognize benchmarks of productivity and review each employee against them.

By identifying problem areas and providing additional training to those employees that need it, companies can boost productivity in the long run.

Moreover, employee monitoring software can provide comprehensive reports in real-time. This data enables managers to track team productivity and analyze it to maintain the highest performance levels.

B. Employees can use productivity reports to enhance their own performance.

With the data based on their tracked hours, employees can identify areas they need to improve on and those they're excelling at. Employees can also plan their days better by allocating less time to the tasks they’re most skilled at and more time to other tasks.

Additionally, when employees know their time is recorded, they’re less likely to waste time on non-work-related tasks.

C. Employees can use distraction management tools to maintain focus.

Whether your employees work from home or the office, they can get distracted during their tasks.

Fortunately, employees can use the monitoring software’s features like idle timers, productivity reports, etc., to help them stay focused on one task at a time.

For example, Time Doctor has a built-in inactivity tracker to help employees remain actively engaged while working and be at their productive best.

Additionally, employees can record and track time on various tasks and projects. This allows them to focus on one deliverable at a time and gives them an accurate overview of how long each task or project is taking.

4. How does Employee Monitoring Help Companies Improve Performance?

Monitoring software does more than simply track employee working hours.

Employee monitoring software helps companies improve their teams’ performance by providing actionable data, trends, and in-depth insights for more productive workplaces.

With tools like Time Doctor, employers can access analytics that helps them:

• Measure and analyze productivity on an individual, departmental, and company level.
• Identify and pinpoint causes for highs and lows in team performance.
• Single out and scrutinize any costly inefficiencies related to users’ activities and direct resources to the highest ROI (Return on Investment) activities.
• Identify the apps and websites that employees use the most and whether these are productive or non-productive platforms.
• Motivate employees to perform at their best because they know their working hours are being recorded.

This way, companies no longer need to act on assumptions — managers and employers can make data-backed decisions on employee performance.

5. What Types of Companies Use Employee Monitoring Software?

Employee monitoring software is a flexible way of tracking employee performance, making it suitable for small, medium, and large teams from almost any industry. It’s also an excellent solution for monitoring offshore teams.

For example, if you have a large workforce with multiple teams working on various projects simultaneously, you can track each project individually with tools like Time Doctor.

The best monitoring solutions also have mobile apps that are great for sales reps, marketers, or anyone who needs to track time on the go.

Other teams that could benefit from the software include:

• SMBs (small and medium-sized businesses).
• Employees of large enterprises.
• Office workers.
• AEC (Architects, Engineers & Construction).
• Law Firms.
• Accounting Agencies.
• Software Development teams.
• Startups and Rapidly Growing Businesses.

6. The Pros and Cons of Employee Monitoring

If you’re unsure whether employee monitoring is essential for you, weighing the pros and cons is a good idea.

A. Pros of Employee Monitoring

Here are some advantages of employee monitoring:

• Reduces Time Wastage. Even if employees waste just ten minutes each day, over time, this adds up. Employee monitoring tools can help you address the problem of employee time wastage.
• Saves Money. If you pay your employees hourly, you can save money by only paying them for the time they’re actually working.
• Boosts Productivity. Real-time monitoring and insightful, actionable analytics help you boost individual, team, and organizational productivity.
• Accurate Payroll. Since each employee’s working hours are recorded, you can say goodbye to payroll discrepancies.
• More Focused Workforce. With idle time tracking and distraction management features, tools like Time Doctor can help keep teams focused during working hours.
• Easier Performance Evaluations. Managers can easily evaluate employee performance, conduct reviews, identify top performers, spot problems, etc.

B. Cons of Employee Monitoring

Here are some potential downsides associated with employee monitoring:

• Perceived Lack of Privacy and Trust. Employees can feel like their employer doesn’t trust them and that their privacy is being invaded. However, you can quickly ease their concerns by explaining what you monitor and how employees benefit from it.
• Increased Work-related Stress. Employees who are new to monitoring can feel stressed from having their activities recorded. They may also feel the pressure to perform. Employers can alleviate these fears by being transparent from the start.
• Legal Ramifications. You must know what your country/state laws say about employee monitoring — there may be variations in what you can monitor from one jurisdiction to another. Generally, you should be transparent about what you're monitoring and only track activity during employee work hours — not what they do in their private time.

7. How to Determine if Employee Monitoring is Right for Your Company

If you’re trying to decide if employee monitoring is right for your team, ask yourself if you’ve experienced:

• Employee time fraud, late or false clock-ins, and early clock-outs.
• Time lost and productivity compromised due to employees not staying on task or adhering to the deadline.
• Poor time management causing your team to exceed project budgets.
• Employees wasting time on social media or unproductive sites during work hours.
• Getting incorrectly billed for hours by freelancers and contractors on projects or tasks.
• Hourly rates being allocated and billed to the wrong client.
• Excessive admin and time wasted completing and checking manual timesheets and activity logs.

While almost every company faces at least one of these issues, these problems (when left unchecked) can severely hinder employee performance and affect company-wide productivity.

If your company shares these struggles, employee monitoring may be the solution.

8. How Much Does Employee Monitoring Cost?

You’ll need to consider more than just the price of the actual employee monitoring software when determining how much employee monitoring will cost. There’s also setup time, training, installation requirements, and possibly ongoing support to consider.

Here are some things to include in your cost estimations:

A. Pricing Model

Usually, employee monitoring solutions charge one lump sum price and additional tiered pricing for other features. Or you pay the price per user (billed either monthly or annually).

Time Doctor pricing starts at just $7 per user per month, making it one of the most affordable monitoring solutions for companies of any size. There’s also a 14-day free trial available.

B. Hardware and Installation

Determine whether it requires installing complex and costly hardware on-site.

If it does, expenses could end up outweighing the benefits, especially if you have to hire IT experts for maintenance.

Instead, look for a simple to use solution that can be installed quickly and easily and will incur no additional expenses — like Time Doctor.

C. Training

Avoid monitoring software that's so complicated that you need days of training for each team member. Remember, a slow learning curve will cost your team time and money.

Instead, opt for a user-friendly solution like Time Doctor, and your team can start using it right from day one — with minimal or no training necessary.

D. Integrations

Consider whether the monitoring software you choose can work with the other software in your toolkit, like a project management tool like Trello or Asana.

If it doesn't, the tool could interrupt your workflows. This could end up costing your company lost time and productivity.

So always go for employee monitoring software that can work with your other workplace tools to monitor employee productivity across these apps.

9. How to Successfully Incorporate Employee Monitoring Software Amongst Your Team

The benefits of implementing employee monitoring software will be minimal if you don’t have the support of your team.

Here are some tips on how to incorporate the software amongst your employees:

A. Transparency is Key

It’s important to inform employees that they’re being monitored beforehand. Communicate with them exactly how you’ll be tracking them and the purpose for monitoring.

If team members understand that monitoring software is there to assist them with time management and productivity rather than micromanage them, they will be more open to it.

B. Explain All The Benefits

Let your team know how they can benefit from monitoring software. For example, accurate timesheets can be processed faster - employees benefit from a faster payroll process.

Additionally, employees can take control of their time by keeping track of how long they spend on tasks and allocating time more efficiently. It empowers them to manage their time better and eases the pressure associated with deliverables.

C. Include Employees in the Implementation Process

When choosing a monitoring solution, consult your team members and make them part of the decision-making and implementation processes.

It’s also a good idea to get team buy-in early on in the process. You can ask key team members their opinions on implementing the software and any objections they anticipate.

Additionally, employers should have a monitoring policy in place so that everyone involved has a common point of reference.

10. What to Look for in a Good Employee Monitoring Software Solution

Before you decide on the best employee monitoring software for your organization, here are three questions you should answer:

A. What are your company’s goals?

Say you want to reduce the time your sales team spends browsing the internet while they’re prospecting. Then, you need a solution that can show you which websites/apps your team visits the most.

Or maybe you run an advertising agency and want to ensure efficiency when allocating billable hours to various clients. Here, you’ll need a solution that lets you track time for individual tasks and projects.

The employee monitoring solution you choose will depend on what you want to achieve with each team.

B. What’s your company’s working model?

The modern workplace comprises employees who work from home, come into the office occasionally, and office-based employees.

The solution you choose will need to accommodate your particular working model.

If you have remote employees and an in-office team, you’ll need a solution that works for both.

If you have a team that works flexible schedules, your monitoring solution will have to accommodate that.

C. What features do you value most?

Each employer will need to determine what features are most important to them.

But regardless of your company’s requirements, here are some of the features you should look for in a good monitoring tool:

• Time tracking: Daily tracking of productive and non-productive hours.
• Powerful productivity reports: Details reports and analytics for data-based decision-making.
• Web and app usage monitoring: Which sites and apps employees spend the most time on.
• Simplified Payroll: Process employee payroll accurately.
• Idle time alerts: Remind users to stay off unproductive sites and apps like social media.
• Shifts and schedules: Create and manage work schedules.
• Integrations: Syncs with the other tools you use most.

Time Doctor has all these features and more.

11. Try Time Doctor's Employee Monitoring Software for FREE 

Monitoring your employees’ productivity doesn’t have to be complicated.

If you’re looking for a straightforward and reliable way to do it, Time Doctor is your best option. It’s a breeze to install and incredibly easy to use. You also get a host of employee-friendly features you can customize to suit your needs.

An added benefit is that Time Doctor doesn’t just track and record employee hours; it can also help skyrocket your team’s productivity, streamline project and payroll management, and more!

Why not sign up for Time Doctor’s 14-day free trial today and experience all its impressive features for yourself?