Workpuls Teramind ActivTrak Hubstaff DeskTime Time Doctor RescueTime Kickidler Veriato Work Examiner
OVERVIEW
Price $6/user/month $6/user/month $7.20/user/month $7/user/month $7/user/month $9.99/user/month $6/user/month $9.99/user/month $150/licence/year $60/licence (lifetime)
Free trial 7 days 7 days No 14 days 14 days 14 days 30 days 7 days Yes 30 days
Ease of use Very easy Difficult Very easy Easy Easy Very easy Very easy Very easy Very difficult Easy
TRACKING METHODS
Unlimited (tracker working 24/7)
Fixed (defined working hours)
Automatic (when computer is connected to a specified network)
Manual (start/stop)
Project based (track time only on projects)
GENERAL MONITORING FEATURES
Stealth mode
App and website usage
Real-time monitoring
Offline time tracking
Attendance
Activity levels
Keylogger
Geolocation
Remote desktop control
Website/activity blocking
SCREENSHOTS AND RECORDING
Screenshots
Screenshots on demand
Screen recording
PRODUCTIVITY FEATURES
Productivity trends
Websites and apps labeling
Category labeling
Productivity alerts
ADVANCED SECURITY FEATURES
User behavior analytics
Data loss prevention
Advanced file and web monitoring
REPORTING
Productivity reports
Team reports
Timelines
Email reports
Access management
PLATFORMS
Web
Mac desktop app
Windows desktop app
Linux desktop app
Mobile app iOS, Android iOS, Android iOS, Android iOS, Android iOS, Android Android
Browser extension Chrome Chrome Chrome
Other Citrix, VMware Chrome OS
OTHER
Support Phone, email, online Phone, email, online Phone, email, online Email, online Phone, email, online, in-person Online Phone, email, online Email, online, Viber, Whatsapp Phone, email, online, support ticket Phone, email, online
Knowledge base
Video tutorials
Integrations comming soon
API
Deployment cloud, on-premise cloud, on-premise, AWS, Azure cloud cloud cloud cloud cloud on-premise cloud, on-premise on-premise
Kronos Humanity Timeclockplus Tsheets Wheniwork Deputy Replicon Jibble EbilityTimeTracker OnTheClock BeeBole
OVERVIEW
Price(per month)Available upon requestFrom $2 per userAvailable upon requestFrom $6.40 per user+$16Free for up to 75 usersFrom $2.50 per userBasic plan:$30 for 5 users+$5 per additional userFrom $1.50 per employeeFrom $4 per user+$8From $2.20 per user$5.99 per user per month
Free trial30 days14 daysYes14 days14 days14 days30 days30 days,no credit card required
Ease of useDifficultEasyDifficultVery easyEasyEasyDifficultVery easyEasyEasyEasy
FEATURES
Timecard management
Scheduling
Shift Trading
Timesheets
Break time management
Real-time tracking
PTO Management
Payroll
Invoicing
Client billing
GPS tracking
Clock out reminders
Alerts
Manual time
PUNCH-IN METHODS
Web app
Mobile app
Time clock device
Time clock kiosk
Facial recognition
Fingerprint scanning
Geofencing
Group punch-in
REPORTING
Visual reports
Email reports
Time rounding
MANAGEMENT
Permissions
Manager approvals
Add time for others
Integrations
PLATFORMS
Web
Android app
iOS app
Mac desktop app
Windows desktop app
Linux desktop app
OTHER
SupportPhone and onlinePhone and onlinePhone,chat and onlinePhone and chatEmail and onlineChat and phonePhone,email,chat and onlinePhone and onlinePhone,email,chat and onlinePhone and onlineOnline chat and video support in English,French,and Spanish
Knowledge base
Video tutorials
Community forum
API

Remote teams often lack the cohesiveness of in-office teams.

Once making the move to a virtual work environment, many traditional workplace forms of communication, collaboration, and coordination are as good as useless. 

As such, to create a tight-knit remote team that operates as a unit and works towards sustainable business productivity, you need systems in place to support effective functioning at a distance.

In this guide, we’ll cover how one of the most important tools for creating accountability, employee monitoring software for tracking performance - can help you get the most from your remote teams.

1. Gain Workforce Insights

Arguably, the most important reason to implement employee website monitoring for your remote team is to gain workforce insights.

With a working time app, you can identify:

  • Top performers 
  • Performance benchmarks
  • Productivity trends

You can use time tracking as a springboard to greater productivity insights. With remote workforce monitoring software, you can collect time data and then visualize it on the productivity dashboard before converting it into actionable steps for improving performance for remote workers.

Here are a few simple examples of what you can do with time data and the insights it can lead to:

2. Create Accountability

One of the most compelling reasons to install time tracking in your virtual workplace isn’t directly related to the software.

It’s a byproduct of implementing time tracking in your team: a greater sense of accountability.

While this isn’t a feature or a guarantee, it taps into human psychology and works more often than not.

How does time tracking create greater accountability?

There are two ways time tracking can boost individual agency and encourage employees to take more accountability for their actions:

  • Incentive motivation: By sharing time data with employees, you create transparency and make it easier for them to hit performance goals and climb the career ladder. When team members can see how they spend their time, it puts the ball in their court, which can be an incentive for greater performance. 

  • Fear motivation: There’s no denying that tracking remote employee time also creates fear-based motivation in which nobody wants to be seen to be slacking or failing to meet performance standards.

When you track time, performance appraisals become a straightforward case of reviewing the numbers, so employees have nowhere to hide. This level of accountability can skyrocket productivity and create an environment in which idle time is a thing of the past.

3. Accurate Payroll

In a remote team, payroll can be nigh-on impossible to calculate without solid numbers.

With automatic time tracking, remote employees need not worry about being fairly compensated for their time and effort at work. Time tracking ensures that every submitted timesheet and payroll window is accurate, so an hour worked always results in an hour paid.

Being able to distinguish between billable and non-billable hours is also useful, as you can divide employee time up into:

  • Paid sick time
  • Paid time off
  • Shift time

This is especially useful for working with contractors, freelancers, and agencies for accurate billing and invoicing.

4. Improve Operational Efficiency

Time tracking can be an effective way to boost operational efficiency within a company, but also within a remote team.

How?

When you use a comprehensive time tracking solution like Insightful, you can go the extra mile and find out what apps your remote workers are using most and least. You can also align the time they spend with the various processes and workflows they engage in.

With this information, you can identify both apps and processes that are inefficient and refine them to create a more streamlined system of working.

Say your remote team is spending a significant portion of time using a communication tool, but this seems to eat into their morning productivity. With time tracking, you can identify this trend and either reevaluate whether the tool is worth the expense, or find ways of relying on it less to reduce the impact context shifting has on your team.

5.  Less Micromanagement 

Nobody wants to micromanage - or be micromanaged.

What if there were a solution to cut down on the need for micromanagement, leaving team leaders and remote team members to their own devices?

There is: time tracking.

Choose a remote worker time tracker, or a more robust monitoring tool. Just make sure it allows you to set up automatic time tracking and trust that your remote workers are spending their time wisely and don’t need you to check in regularly to keep them on track.

As mentioned earlier, time tracking can create greater accountability, so by enabling it, you can take a more hands-off approach to managing the people in your team and spend more time on strategic decision-making.

A computer activity monitor tool does the heavy lifting in this case, so you don’t have to brush up on how to monitor computer activity yourself.

6. Greater Transparency

In project management, it isn’t just the project manager and the team under them involved.

There could be:

  • Senior leadership
  • Various department heads 
  • External stakeholders 
  • Clients 

With various parties involved, it’s important to be as transparent as possible to satisfy client and stakeholder expectations. When you can quickly and easily prove to stakeholders what your team has been working on through how they’ve spent their time, you can create a relationship built on trust.

You can also use the time data to build performance reports using pc activity monitoring software like Insightful to present to senior leadership and prove that you’re using your team and resources wisely.

7. Resource Allocation

On the topic of resources, knowing how and where to allocate them when working in a remote team can be challenging.

Fortunately, when you turn to time data, you can identify exactly how well you’re employing the resources at your disposal.

Imagine you have a situation in which a project deadline is approaching, and you notice that even with solid 8-hour shifts from each of your remote workers, you’re not on track to finish the project on time.

To avoid falling short of client expectations and missing the deadline, you could use the data to justify bringing in a contractor to finish the project on time. The cost of hiring a contractor for a short period of time would likely be justified when weighed up against the cost of missing a deadline and the damage it could do to your reputation.

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Time Tracking

7 Benefits of Real-Time Time Tracking for Remote Workers

Written by
Kendra Gaffin
Published on
February 22, 2023

Remote teams often lack the cohesiveness of in-office teams.

Once making the move to a virtual work environment, many traditional workplace forms of communication, collaboration, and coordination are as good as useless. 

As such, to create a tight-knit remote team that operates as a unit and works towards sustainable business productivity, you need systems in place to support effective functioning at a distance.

In this guide, we’ll cover how one of the most important tools for creating accountability, employee monitoring software for tracking performance - can help you get the most from your remote teams.

1. Gain Workforce Insights

Arguably, the most important reason to implement employee website monitoring for your remote team is to gain workforce insights.

With a working time app, you can identify:

  • Top performers 
  • Performance benchmarks
  • Productivity trends

You can use time tracking as a springboard to greater productivity insights. With remote workforce monitoring software, you can collect time data and then visualize it on the productivity dashboard before converting it into actionable steps for improving performance for remote workers.

Here are a few simple examples of what you can do with time data and the insights it can lead to:

2. Create Accountability

One of the most compelling reasons to install time tracking in your virtual workplace isn’t directly related to the software.

It’s a byproduct of implementing time tracking in your team: a greater sense of accountability.

While this isn’t a feature or a guarantee, it taps into human psychology and works more often than not.

How does time tracking create greater accountability?

There are two ways time tracking can boost individual agency and encourage employees to take more accountability for their actions:

  • Incentive motivation: By sharing time data with employees, you create transparency and make it easier for them to hit performance goals and climb the career ladder. When team members can see how they spend their time, it puts the ball in their court, which can be an incentive for greater performance. 

  • Fear motivation: There’s no denying that tracking remote employee time also creates fear-based motivation in which nobody wants to be seen to be slacking or failing to meet performance standards.

When you track time, performance appraisals become a straightforward case of reviewing the numbers, so employees have nowhere to hide. This level of accountability can skyrocket productivity and create an environment in which idle time is a thing of the past.

3. Accurate Payroll

In a remote team, payroll can be nigh-on impossible to calculate without solid numbers.

With automatic time tracking, remote employees need not worry about being fairly compensated for their time and effort at work. Time tracking ensures that every submitted timesheet and payroll window is accurate, so an hour worked always results in an hour paid.

Being able to distinguish between billable and non-billable hours is also useful, as you can divide employee time up into:

  • Paid sick time
  • Paid time off
  • Shift time

This is especially useful for working with contractors, freelancers, and agencies for accurate billing and invoicing.

4. Improve Operational Efficiency

Time tracking can be an effective way to boost operational efficiency within a company, but also within a remote team.

How?

When you use a comprehensive time tracking solution like Insightful, you can go the extra mile and find out what apps your remote workers are using most and least. You can also align the time they spend with the various processes and workflows they engage in.

With this information, you can identify both apps and processes that are inefficient and refine them to create a more streamlined system of working.

Say your remote team is spending a significant portion of time using a communication tool, but this seems to eat into their morning productivity. With time tracking, you can identify this trend and either reevaluate whether the tool is worth the expense, or find ways of relying on it less to reduce the impact context shifting has on your team.

5.  Less Micromanagement 

Nobody wants to micromanage - or be micromanaged.

What if there were a solution to cut down on the need for micromanagement, leaving team leaders and remote team members to their own devices?

There is: time tracking.

Choose a remote worker time tracker, or a more robust monitoring tool. Just make sure it allows you to set up automatic time tracking and trust that your remote workers are spending their time wisely and don’t need you to check in regularly to keep them on track.

As mentioned earlier, time tracking can create greater accountability, so by enabling it, you can take a more hands-off approach to managing the people in your team and spend more time on strategic decision-making.

A computer activity monitor tool does the heavy lifting in this case, so you don’t have to brush up on how to monitor computer activity yourself.

6. Greater Transparency

In project management, it isn’t just the project manager and the team under them involved.

There could be:

  • Senior leadership
  • Various department heads 
  • External stakeholders 
  • Clients 

With various parties involved, it’s important to be as transparent as possible to satisfy client and stakeholder expectations. When you can quickly and easily prove to stakeholders what your team has been working on through how they’ve spent their time, you can create a relationship built on trust.

You can also use the time data to build performance reports using pc activity monitoring software like Insightful to present to senior leadership and prove that you’re using your team and resources wisely.

7. Resource Allocation

On the topic of resources, knowing how and where to allocate them when working in a remote team can be challenging.

Fortunately, when you turn to time data, you can identify exactly how well you’re employing the resources at your disposal.

Imagine you have a situation in which a project deadline is approaching, and you notice that even with solid 8-hour shifts from each of your remote workers, you’re not on track to finish the project on time.

To avoid falling short of client expectations and missing the deadline, you could use the data to justify bringing in a contractor to finish the project on time. The cost of hiring a contractor for a short period of time would likely be justified when weighed up against the cost of missing a deadline and the damage it could do to your reputation.