Remote workspaces are becoming more common in the past year. Due to the worldwide pandemic, employees were confined within their houses and had to reinvent themselves to create a productive work environment in their homes.
With the increase of remote work, companies are quickly discovering that it can be hard to figure out if your employees are working. This has increased the need for companies to adopt productivity monitoring tools.
In this article, we will talk about what productive monitoring tools are, the benefits of investing in a monitoring tool for your company, and a few tools employers are using to keep watch on remote workers.
What is a productivity monitoring tool?
A productivity monitoring tool is a form of computer software that allows you to remotely manage your employees. With these tools, you can keep track of what your employees do throughout the business hours and what they’re using their computers for.
Companies wanting to understand how their remote employees operate are using different monitoring tools. By investing in a productivity monitoring tool, you can keep track of various things your employees do, including:
- Application usage: check which computer applications your employees are accessing the most, with a potential breakdown of hours used per day.
- Login history: see when your employees log into their computer every day during the workday.
- Web browsing: make sure your employees are not accessing any websites that don’t pertain to their jobs throughout their scheduled business hours.
- GPS tracking: check where in the country (or in the world) your employees are accessing their machine from.
Why should you invest in a productivity monitoring tool?
From keeping track of what your employees are accessing during business hours to restricting unnecessary websites from business-owned computers, a productivity monitoring tool can help you and your business increase productivity while protecting privacy.
Here are some reasons why businesses are adopting several types of productivity monitoring tools:
- Improves productivity: When an employee knows they’re being monitored within their work computer, they tend to be more mindful of their actions at work. This can cut down any superfluous activity during the workday.
- Protects privacy: Using a monitoring tool can protect you and your business from any cyberattack. If you are the victim of a cyberattack and sensitive information is stolen, you can use your monitoring tool to understand how this breach happened. These tools become even more important if your business deals with PHI (protected health information) or PII (personal identifiable information).
- Supports personnel decisions: A monitoring tool can also help you understand your team better. With a monitoring tool, you can see how employees are spending their time behind their computer screens. This intel can help you determine how your employees are performing overall and if any changes are needed.
- Aids with any IT problem: Since you can see what is going on with your employee’s computer, you can also help that employee if need be. Some monitoring and productivity tools come with the ability for you to remotely access your employee’s computer. If there are any problems with an employee’s computer, you or your IT section can remotely access the computer and run diagnostics or fix the problem.
What are some tools to monitor productivity?
Here are a few productivity tools that would help you monitor your employees’ actions throughout the workday:
ActivTrak: ActivTrak provides you workforce analytics and insights. It can help you optimize processes and maximize technology throughout your business. ActivTrak can help you:
- Gain insights and increase team productivity through productivity reports;
- Understand which applications and websites your employees use through their Application and Website feature;
- Foster a culture that empowers employees to achieve their goals through the Productivity Coaching feature;
- Block certain websites and create alarms based on any combination of conditions;
- And much more.
ActivTrak’s premium account costs $15 per user per month, but there are Enterprise plans available that can be tailored to your organization’s needs. For more information, visit their website.
Teramind: Teramind helps you monitor and understand user activities and behaviors, while also protecting you from any data loss. Teramind’s features include:
- Employee monitoring;
- Insider Threat Prevention;
- Compliance and Audit;
- User Activity Monitoring;
- And User Behavior Analytics.
Teramind’s cost starts at $5 per endpoint per month on on-premise computers or $10 per user per month on cloud computers. For more information, visit their website.
Hubstaff: Hubstaff’s goal is to help everyone work better together with different features to drive productivity. It can be viewed both on desktop and smartphones, allowing you to have full access to your business’ analytics in an instant. Hubstaff can help you with:
- Tracking work hours with online timesheets and reports;
- Automate management of your remote team;
- And much more.
From simple time tracking and reporting to GPS location tracking and team management, Hubstaff provides different plans according to your business needs. It can range from $0 for one user only to $20 per user per month for enterprise plans. Visit their website for more information.
Skyline IT Services
Skyline IT Services is a Technology Solution Provider based in San Diego, CA. We bring a wide range of different services for small and medium-sized businesses throughout Southern California.
We are here to provide any tech support you need, including monitoring tools to improve the current workspace for your remote employees. We are here to bring affordable and exceptional IT services for you and your company.