Dramatically improve your team’s performance by analyzing productivity and optimizing workflows with Insightful's discreet user activity monitoring software.
Dramatically improve your team’s performance by analyzing productivity and optimizing workflows with Insightful’ discreet user activity monitoring software.
Our complete user activity monitoring software gives you immediate, performance-enhancing visibility into how your team works.
Understand habits, track trends and streamline workflows to help your team be its productive best.
Get a complete, team-wide picture via your monitoring dashboard, plus gain deep data insights via regular custom reports.
Foster top-line performance, better habits and support employee wellness without ever compromising on trust or privacy.
Insightful gives you extensive data and invaluable insights about your employees’ daily habits that help boost productivity by 20%+ within days.
Monitor apps and websites used on tasks to optimize processes and make work more efficient
Analyze how much employee time is spent productively – in the office and at home
Benchmark individuals and replicate the habits of top performers using real-time productivity data
Keep workloads in check and workflows in optimal shape to keep your employees at their productive best and your whole team performing at its peak.
Closely monitor individual workloads to support employee wellness, reduce turnover and avoid work backlogs
Create more realistic deadlines and get more work done by identifying the exact time specific tasks take to complete
Compare productivity levels over time to pinpoint ideal employee workloads and keep them engaged via access to their own data
Insightful lets you see which apps and software your team uses to get the job done most productively -- and which licenses are needlessly costing you money.
Get a clear picture of the apps and websites your employees use daily and whether they speed up or slow down workflows
Save money and streamline processes by analyzing app and software usage to reveal the number of licences you actually need
Better manage project budgets by accurately allocating resources by tracking billing rates and staffing costs
Protect personal employee information and ensure legal and ethical compliance to never undermine employee trust with Insightful’s best-in-class privacy standards.
Use flexible settings to select which apps and websites to monitor so that personal use and private information is never tracked
Breed team-wide transparency and individual improvement by giving employees direct access to their monitoring data
Use completely customizable permissions for employees, managers and clients so that data is only ever accessed by the appropriate people
Monitor employee activity office-wide without ever interfering with their work or consuming your valuable time.
Gain unmatched oversight of your team’s activity no matter how many locations your remote team is in.
User activity monitoring is much more than plain tracking of your employees’ daily activities. It has many benefits that can accelerate your business by elevating performance -- and we’ll explore exactly how in this section.
What is User Activity Monitoring Software?
How Does Activity Tracking Software Work?
How to Monitor Computer Activity?
The Benefits of User Activity Monitoring
The Disadvantages of User Activity Monitoring
Legal Issues to Consider
Choosing the Best Activity Monitor
Wrapping Up
Similar to employee monitoring tools, activity tracking software is used by organizations that want to improve their team’s performance on many different levels. The software lets managers track the daily activities of their employees, giving them information about how they spend their working hours.
It also helps you reveal overall and individual productivity in your organization, while also providing you with actionable information about how to improve it. Additionally, you can see user activities in real time and historically, enabling you to accurately track the progress of each of your teams in concrete terms.
A PC activity monitor like Insightful lets you track your employees in an efficient way, while making sure their privacy isn’t compromised. Primarily, it saves time and shows you how your company’s resources are used, but also helps you prevent potentially harmful activities like insider threats and data breaches.
An effective activity tracker is made out of two parts:
1.
An application that is installed on your employees’ computers, known as an “agent”; and
2.
A dashboard that managers and administrators can access via browser.
The agent on your workers’ computers collects the data and sends it to the dashboard, where you can review it on individual, team or organizational level. The software can also be used to create data-rich reports based on the precise information and insights you’re interested in.
This feature allows you to see which apps and websites your employees are using throughout their work day, as well as how much time they’re spending on each of them.
Employee screen monitoring software with screenshots provides a snapshot of what your employees are working on at any moment.
Based on your preferences, this feature can be turned on or off and customized to scheduled time intervals for when screenshots will be taken. Some software also allows you to turn off screenshots for specific apps and websites.
With this feature, you can see how much time they’ve spent actively working on their computers, as opposed to idle and manual time entries. Tracked activity is comprehensively displayed via computer activity logs for everyone on your team.
Based on labels (productive, unproductive and neutral) that you assign to each app and website, employee computer monitoring software will automatically calculate the productivity levels of your employees and teams.
Autogenerated, data-rich reports include employees’ attendance, productivity information, and information about time spent on projects and tasks. Reports can be instantly downloaded, or you can create a schedule to have them automatically emailed to you on a regular basis.
There are several types of tools you can use to monitor employees’ computer activity. Besides user activity monitoring software, you may also turn to employee monitoring software, or time & attendance tracking software.
There are also software options that are more focused on security, like insider threat prevention or data loss prevention tools.
All of these tools track employee computer activity in a different way. Their features, while similar in some ways, track different activities and will give you disparate reports. This is why you should consider what data you need most to improve your business before you decide on one type of software.
The benefits of user activity monitoring software are numerous. And they compound over time. That is, the longer you use the software the greater the impact it has on your team’s performance. Let’s take a look at the competitive advantages companies gain when using user activity software.
Whichever type of employee activity and productivity tracking software you choose, you’ll be able to use it to increase productivity in your organization. It does this by helping you find and remove bottlenecks in your projects and processes. Additionally, it can help minimize distractions, leaving your employees more focused than ever before.
While, like any software, implementing user activities monitoring software involves an investment, it will soon pay for itself by saving you time and resources.
By discovering and eliminating workflow bottlenecks, your workforce will become more efficient, saving you hours of valuable time. Further, companies lose a lot of money due to “time theft” and employees spending time on private matters during working hours. Computer activity tracker minimizes this wasted time, easing the heavy financial costs it causes companies.
It’s not uncommon for some employees to initially be skeptical or displeased by the idea of having their activities tracked during working hours. However, by explaining the benefits to them, any skepticism can be countered to get their buy in. So, let’s go over the key benefits employee activity monitoring software brings to your employees.
Daily activity log software typically has in-built project management functionality, or can be easily integrated into your existing systems.
Each time you start a new project you can clearly see how busy your team is, no matter how large or distributed they are. This level of oversight allows you to better assign employees to projects based on workload, without having to interrupt their current work.
Employees appreciate this feature as it helps them stay busy, but not overworked.
It’s no secret people enjoy being recognized for their work, development, and contributions to company success. Once you grasp how to monitor employees’ computer activity, you’re able to recognise all the exceptional work for your employees.
If you don’t have a rewards system within your organization, you should definitely consider creating one and rewarding those employees who’ve made the most progress, based on results or over a certain time period.
When you use software to monitor PC activity you can easily discover standout workers who deserve bigger bonuses or incentives; or those who need additional training in order to become better at what they do.
All employees appreciate transparency. They want to know exactly how the company is doing, where it’s headed, and how it will get there. They also need to know how what they’re doing contributes to the company’s overall success.
Employees’ activity monitoring tools enable you to share collected data in an easy way. Not only does this breed transparency and trust, it keeps everyone informed about company progress.
There’s no denying that business activity monitoring software brings many benefits to employees and employers alike. However, there are still some drawbacks you should pay attention to.
It’s not a secret that if you monitor computer activity there is the potential to cause stress and burnout among your employees. This is due to the perceived trust and privacy issues that can occur when you use monitor PC activity software.
If you introduce monitoring software without explaining to your team why you’re doing it, which data you’ll collect, and who will see it, you’re leaving a lot to their imagination.
Unfortunately, the first instinct is to think “Our boss doesn’t trust us.” You need to tackle this issue from the get-go by taking the time to explain, as well as answer any questions, your employees might have about computer activity logging. In short, clear communication is vital.
Your workers may also worry about their privacy, which is why you need to limit monitoring only to the apps and websites used for business, and only use it during working hours.
How to monitor employee computer without micromanaging them? Quite easily actually. Don’t nitpick on every single thing they do, and stop looking at individual data for every minute of every day. Instead, look at aggregated data on a weekly basis, and if you notice that someone’s productivity is spiraling down, only then dig into their individual data and have an open conversation about it.
Be careful not to micromanage. If you go around alerting people each time they open up the news instead of work emails, you’ll likely create an unhappy and stressed workforce.
Activity monitoring software, especially those that track internet activity, is accompanied by important legal and ethical considerations. Therefore, to ensure that you’re implementing and using the software by the book, we strongly recommend that you consult legal experts in your country of operation.
Depending on the country, the law typically requires you to notify employees about any monitoring practices you’re using. In some parts of the world, you’re even required to get their written consent and notify them at least two weeks in advance, as well as other stringent requirements.
Additionally, you must not forget about GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) and other legislations that cover data protection and privacy.
In some cases, you should consult with employee or labour law experts, in other cases your better choice might be data protection professionals.
There’s an abundance of solutions that can help you to monitor users’ internet activity, or more broadly monitor their computer activities. So, it’s no wonder that choosing the best activity monitor can feel like an overwhelming task.
To help simplify your task, here are our favorite tips to help you select a solution that will be the best for you.
Everything starts with a goal. Think about why you want to use this type of solution and what it will help you achieve in the short- and long-term. For example, do you need software to monitor remote employees?
Any of the following goals are good, but take your time to tailor them to your needs
With your goals clearly in mind, it will be easier to create a shortlist of solutions that fit your needs. And once you have that, you can start testing.
Check for lags, bugs or any shortcomings the internet activity tracker has during your testing process. No solution will be perfect, but you shouldn’t overlook any red flags. Test the software’s speed, storage space, and take note of the type of data it can collect.
Use the full duration of free trials that providers offer, pay attention to the ease of use, and include your employees in the process to get their input.
It’s easy to find the cheapest solution and call it a day. But the fact that it’s the cheapest doesn’t mean that it’s going to be simple to use or install. Not to mention its effectiveness.
When selecting a solution, think about the complexity of the solution on the user’s side. Are your employees having trouble navigating the agent? Do managers complain about the time and effort it takes to navigate the dashboard?
Usability is a critical part of your choice. You may need to pay a bit more for a smooth, user-optimized solution, but considering the time it will save you it’s a justified expense.
Having read this handy guide, you’re now a lot more in the know about user activity monitoring software than you were a few minutes ago. But, safe to say, there’s still a lot to get your head around. Good thing for you, we’re experts in the space!
If you really want to learn more about how to monitor employees’ computer use and how to monitor online activity, sign up for a free trial and we’ll guide you through the entire process, answering any questions along the way.