11 Best Employee Monitoring Software 2021
Employee monitoring software is more complex than just clocking in and out each day. So much goes into the effective management of your team and software dedicated to this keeps evolving. With new, sophisticated, and more efficient technological tools released into the markets daily, employee monitoring approaches are also evolving. Although employee monitoring may not be accepted by all, it has been widely used to improve staff’s productivity. Limiting the websites your colleagues can visit prevents them from using work hours playing online games or going on social media.
Interestingly, more security and data breaches in a company occur due to employees visiting a malware-infested website, estrange team members, or disregarding proper settings than due to hackers. Employee monitoring is now employed for security purposes as well. Some of this monitoring software can be used as network monitoring tools. It is used to focus on the overall activity of the IT network and to look for patterns that could expose any threats to security. To do this you need machine learning and artificial intelligence. Additionally, employee monitoring software helps prevent data loss by allowing you to wipe or lock down any company device that is lost or unaccounted for. This prevents the data from getting into the wrong hands.
A typical modern workplace is filled with so many distractions that increase the difficulty of completing tasks by personnel. This is especially so when Internet devices are used by such team members thereby decreasing their productivity. Sometimes it is not just productivity that is at stake but the company’s security. Monitoring software provides a wide array of features for monitoring how work hours and applications are used. You could also use it to monitor keystrokes, e-mails, messages, and watch your colleagues through their device’s camera. Some of this software work by using particular policies and rules set by you to send you notifications when they are broken.
Is Employee Monitoring Legal?
Monitoring employees’ devices is legal in the USA and many other countries. If you look through your state laws, you’ll learn that you have a considerable amount of rights to watch your team members at the workplace. Other than that, you can use monitoring software on your team’s devices to control their activities at work. But note that some states still require notifying employees that they’re being tracked so it’s better to talk to your legal assistant before you install such an app on their devices.
Whatever your employees’ number, your needs for monitoring, or budget, there is monitoring software perfect for you. Below is a list of the best employee monitoring software you will find very valuable this 2021.
Top 10 Employee Monitoring Software 2021
Whether you own a small startup or a large business, Clever Control is the right tool for you. The program has broad-ranging functionality and flexibility, meaning that you can adjust it to almost every purpose of monitoring. If you need to track your employees’ daily work routine, Clever Control will collect data about their keystrokes, running applications, active and inactive time, search queries, printer tasks and more.
If your purpose is to ensure that the staff doesn’t waste time on social networks or Youtube, the program will point out such activity of your team for you. Additionally, you can even block access to these websites using the built-in site blocker feature.
If you want to simply check up on your staff every once in a while to make sure they stay focused on work, Clever Control will help you do that. You can watch live streams from the employees’ screens and webcams via your online monitoring account. Alternatively, you can record the screen and video from the webcam throughout the day and watch them later.
You may not have time to scroll through the collected data and interpret it. The program will do it for you and present the results in convenient graphs. They include the statistics of active and inactive time, time spent on social networks and messengers, most used applications and websites, latest search queries and more. Such summaries can be generated for any period for individual employees or all monitored computers in general.
What makes Clever Control even more convenient is the online monitoring dashboard. You can immediately access the reports wherever you are — all you need is a computer or a mobile device and an Internet connection. Moreover, you can adjust the settings or uninstall the program via the dashboard as well.
The program works in the hidden mode — it is not displayed among the running applications in the task manager or anywhere on the computer where usual programs are. There is a free trial available — you can test this great tool for yourself and see how it can benefit your business.
This software is perfect for employee monitoring both for small firms and huge enterprises. It is used for detailed remote control over user activity. Besides, it has numerous amazing functions. Spyrix Employee Monitoring can be used to track keylogger activities, websites, apps, social media, and chats. Any printing activity or external storage such as USB or memory cards can also be tracked.
Also, no matter where you are, you can monitor and control your employees’ as you will access logs via your email. Besides, you can view all recorded data via your secure online account. You just need to log in to the dashboard from any device whenever you’re located. Spyrix software is unique as it also offers log delivery to FTP, LAN, and cloud storage (GoogleDrive, DropBox).
Further, the software can turn the target computer into a kind of surveillance device. This means that you can monitor your employees via computer webcam and microphone, so you will always know what’s going on in the office when you’re absent. The soft allows viewing employees’ computer screens in real mode remotely.
It can operate undetected and offers the hidden mode meaning that the staff members won’t be distracted by the program. Other features of Spyrix Employee Monitoring include clipboard and URL monitoring, keywords alerts, remote uninstallation, and webcam surveillance. The software offers a free trial during which you can decide if it meets all your needs.
3. Workpuls
This innovative employee monitoring software is excellent for time tracking, providing exceptional information about your projects, and activities of employees. You can use it to effectively track attendance, overtime, and employees who work on flexible schedules and integrate it into your payroll. Workpuls makes payment calculation very easy as it has a payment calculator, you just need to input your hourly pay rate.
Additionally, it is easy to install and user-friendly as well. Employers can use this to see how much time an employee spends on each task whether productive or unproductive. It can also be used to monitor the progress of employees’ productivity over a time frame and use it to give clients an accurate project estimate. Whether your team works within the workplace or remotely, is large in number or not, Workpuls is an incredibly amazing choice. With Workpuls, employees’ lateness, unproductivity, and being overpaid are eliminated, opening doors for easy digital transformation and efficiency. Other features of Workpuls include screenshots, websites, and apps tracking and real-time monitoring of employees with a seven-day free trial.
4. Time Doctor
Time Doctor comes in highly recommended as it gives a detailed and precise way of monitoring your employees’ working hours. This encourages transparency. This software among other things lets you know when your employees are chatting instead of working and with who they are chatting. You can use this to set small alerts or notifications for your employees to keep them focused on their tasks. You can also set screenshots to be taken at certain intervals when your employees are working.
Using screenshots, you can let your clients take a look at how their project is progressing. You can do so by setting up their login access without incurring extra costs. You can use these screenshots as proof of the time taken to complete such projects. It can be customized and integrated into your payroll system for more accuracy. This software can be integrated into applications such as Slack, Quickbooks, Salesforce, and Google apps, etc.
5. iMonitor EAM
Made by iMonitorSoft, this Employee Activity Monitor (EAM) is just what you need to monitor your employees. It is the perfect solution you need, giving you real-time alerts and completing features for making reports. It has found use in thousands of businesses over the globe. You could for instance group computers by location or department and use the iMonitor EAM to monitor about 1000 computers from a central server. You can now be able to monitor clipboard activities, keystrokes, websites and apps visited, removable storage devices, and document activities, etc.
Furthermore, this software can be used to run up to ten distinct computers remotely. It can be used to monitor practically every activity of your employees during working hours. Removable storage devices can be blocked. You can also use it to monitor your employees remotely by opening the webcam of a computer to view its surroundings. The iMonitorSoft’s Employee Activity Monitor is a perfect tool to optimize employees’ productivity and preserve the confidentiality of your company’s information.
6. Work Examiner
Apart from monitoring when your employees come to work or when they leave, it helps you schedule reports. It is very flexible, easy to set up, and very user-friendly. You can do all of this unknown to your employees which gives a better result (but note that in some countries you must notify your staff that they are being tracked). Work Examiner can be used basically for work time monitoring, control over web usage, and surveillance. You can effectively use this software to filter websites that can be accessed by an employee and find out the distribution of your organization’s web traffic. Using work examiner for surveillance allows you to see what employees are up to in real-time via screenshots, record all chatting or messaging activities.
Also, the work time monitoring feature allows you to see how your employees use office hours, whether they do so productively. You will know exactly what they spent work hours doing. If you want to have absolute control of your employees’ activities, then you might just be looking for a Work Examiner.
7. InterGuard
If you as an employer desire to monitor and have control over your employees, InterGuard is an excellent choice. It works based on user activity to block, alert, and record activities to encourage productivity and legal compliance for security and data protection. This software combines activity monitoring, prevention of data loss and quick response to incidence to achieve its aim.
Furthermore, InterGuard makes data obtainable for reports, searches and alerts by automatically monitoring employee’s activity. Also, it can be configured to block any unauthorized access to data that could jeopardize the data security of the company. In the event where a company laptop or any hardware is missing, InterGuard can be used to lock it down, retrieve or delete important files. This prevents files from getting into the wrong hands. It can be managed from a single control panel or tried out with a demo.
8. ActivTrak
This employee monitoring software is useful for employee behavior analytics, it works in stealth or undercover mode. However, you need to configure it to that mode before installing it on employees’ computers. Without your employees’ knowledge, you will get the true picture of their office hour usage (again don’t forget to notify your staff if it’s required by the laws of your state). Using your company policies, rules and regulations, you can use ActivTrak to fish out non-compliant employees. You can set triggers to block access to certain websites, files and applications automatically. This prevents employees from being distracted and helps them to be focused instead.
Apart from tracking employees’ activity on the computer and optimizing their productivity, ActivTrak shuts out the risk of malicious threats to your company’s security. It can be launched on Windows, Mac OS, or Linux computers. It is compatible with IOS or Android devices and can be integrated into many other applications. You may need to contact a vendor if you need customized plans.
9. Teramind
With features that allow managers and business owners to configure it based on their requirements and needs, Teramind is highly flexible. It can be used to assess employees’ desktop activities at the end of a workday or in real-time. Employers can do this using Teramind’s features for history playback and live stream. This way, you can see what task, website, or application they spent work hours on and how much time was spent. You can use it to optimize employees’ productivity.
Also, this software can be launched with the use of its self-hosted version or accessed through its website. For cloud access, pricing starts at $150 and self-hosted users pay $750 per month. It can be integrated into other applications like Redmine, NetIQ, and Radar among many others.
10. FlexiServer
A product by NCH software, this software can be automated to monitor attendance, computer usage, legal or security compliance, quality control, just to name a few. It can be used to improve employee’s productivity by monitoring their desktop activities to ensure that they are not using work hours for unproductive purposes.
Also, it is an employee monitoring software that is used by managers, human resource staff, and business owners to monitor their employees. Employees in the field, remote offices, and those within a workplace can be monitored using this software. Also, workers with flexible work schedules and freelancers will find it valuable as there will be no need for them to manually track and submit reports on their work time.
Compared to other monitoring software, FlexiServer can be switched to private mode. Doing so means disabling live monitoring while recording employee activities just for reference. Also, you can use this software to link work hours and attendance records to your payroll software. You can as well use it for job costing. With a pricing of at least $27.66 per month, FlexiServer can be accessed on premised and web-based platforms. The software is compatible with Mac OS, Linux, and Windows.
11. Hubstaff
Hubstaff can be used to accurately monitor employees' work hours. It can be very helpful to businesses that have employees that work on the field or remote locations. Employers can use it to track employees’ computer activities, location, and time spent on various applications whether you are offline or using your mobile devices. It can be integrated into payroll, project management, and many other applications.
Furthermore, Hubstaff can be used to monitor invoicing, payroll, and employees’ schedules to optimize their productivity and to ensure they are timely paid. Based on the number of employees to be monitored, basic plans start from $5 per month.
However, a single user who needs to track their activity levels and time using their keyboard and mouse usage can access Hubstaff for free.
Conclusion
The numerous distractions and security threats to businesses today have made employee monitoring very imperative. It has become very valuable in assessing employees’ out-put and optimizing their productivity whether they are in the field, within the workplace, or a remote location.
Also, employee monitoring helps employers have total control over employees’ activity. It also improves transparency in the workplace thereby fostering a healthy working environment as employees who are monitored tend to focus more. It optimizes employee efficiency, productivity, and business gains.
