Remote Work Monitoring Tool Necessary For You In 2023

In the 21st century, the way we work has undergone a major transformation. For a long time now, work is no longer confined to working days at a fixed office. Technological developments have opened the door to remote working, giving workers greater flexibility and more balanced lives.

However, with that progress, a series of challenges have arisen. One of the most important challenges is how to effectively monitor and manage the performance of remote teams. Therefore, in this article, let’s explore more deeply with Focuscommit an important tool – A remote work monitoring tool, and why it has become an indispensable part of the modern working environment.

The Benefits of Remote Work Monitoring Tool

Remote work monitoring tools offer several benefits for employers and employees in a distributed work environment. Here are some of the key advantages:

  • Ensuring daily accountability among your employees motivates them to deliver results consistently.
  • Employing a reliable time-tracking tool benefits freelancers and contractors by providing concrete evidence of their billable hours to clients.
  • Clients can have complete transparency regarding the remote work they are invoiced for, thanks to detailed records of task-specific time allocations.
  • Embracing remote work can reduce the need for physical office space while maintaining employee productivity.
  • Hiring remote employees becomes less problematic as this tool ensures their commitment to your organization.
  • A proficient remote employee monitoring software streamlines time tracking and task management, saving valuable time in these areas.
  • Employees appreciate the flexibility that remote work monitoring tools can offer. They can often choose when and where they work if they meet their goals and deadlines.

The three types of employee monitoring software tools

The three types of employee monitoring software tools

1. Time trackers

Time tracking software, as previously discussed, allows employees to record and manage their work hours accurately. It’s especially valuable for tracking billable hours, managing tasks efficiently, and generating payroll or client billing reports.

2. Activity trackers

Activity monitoring tools are designed to track employee activities and behaviors while working on their computers. They may include features like keystroke logging, screen capture, application usage tracking, and website monitoring.

These tools are often used for security, compliance, and productivity purposes. They provide insights into how employees use their time and whether they follow company policies.

3. Task trackers/project management

Project management and task-tracking software are primarily used for organizing and managing tasks, projects, and workflows. While their primary function is not employee monitoring, they often include monitoring features.

These features allow managers and team leaders to track task progress, monitor deadlines, and view project timelines. They provide transparency into project status and help ensure that tasks are completed on time.

1. Remote Work Monitoring Tool: Activity Trackers

EmailAnalytics

EmailAnalytics

Email is the primary mode of communication for remote workers, this feature is incredibly valuable for measuring productivity. EmailAnalytics visually represents your team’s email activity, including the number of emails sent and received, their average response times, and even their peak activity times and days of the week.

This information lets you gain valuable insights into your employees’ workload and responsiveness to clients, leads, customers, vendors, and internal colleagues. It’s a powerful tool for assessing how effectively your team manages email communication.

Insightful

Insightful is a newcomer help remote work monitoring tool, offering many of the same capabilities as its counterparts. Its core functionalities include employee monitoring, time tracking, productivity analytics, and automatic time mapping.

With Insightful, you can automatically record employees’ work hours and access daily productivity reports. These reports provide valuable insights into your team’s working patterns and efficiency, helping you understand how your team performs optimally.

ActivTrak

ActivTrak, an employee monitoring software, has a free version that allows you to monitor up to three users. It will enable you to monitor activities such as app usage and website visits and apply content filters.

The paid version offers more advanced features such as USB device detection and security audits.

Teramind

Teramind

Let’s not forget Teramind, an employee monitoring software tool that combines time tracking and activity monitoring. Additionally, Teramind empowers administrators to establish and enforce tailored policies, such as restricting access to specific websites, while also providing alerts for concerning user behaviors.

Hubstaff

Hubstaff, a remote employee monitoring tool, combines screenshots and time tracking to make it easier for employees to work from home.

You can also see activity related to keyboard or mouse use, which will help you determine whether your employees are working.

2. Employee Monitoring Software: Time Tracking

Time Doctor

Time Doctor another remote work monitoring tool, can improve team and individual performance. It records time, generates detailed reports for managers, processes payroll, and tracks breaks. While taking screenshots, protects employees’ privacy.

Time Doctor

This employee monitoring tool can quickly send notifications and alerts to remote workers. It creates a schedule for your team and sends out signals to employees who are late, idling, or not working.

It can be integrated with over 60 communication, project management, and accounting software. The application provides insight to track which websites you and your employees visit and how long. These reports can be accessed online, but you’ll also get them via email each week. This makes it easier to track employee productivity.

Time Doctor is just like other monitoring tools. It offers a 14-day trial, which can be canceled or upgraded at any moment.

Harvest

Harvest stands out as a user-friendly time-tracking tool that seamlessly integrates with various project management and other application styles available in the market. It simplifies the process of analyzing your work through intuitive reporting.

For individuals, Harvest provides a free plan, enabling tracking for up to two projects per month. Teams with full-time workers can access advanced features and a higher project limit for a cost of $12 per user per month.

RescueTime

RescueTime is an excellent web-based tool to measure productivity among remote workers.

It works in the background and monitors your team’s use of a specific website, app, or tool during working hours. It can notify you if you spend too much time on one task or block distracting sites.

You can eventually generate detailed reports about each employee’s time spent on various tasks. You can integrate it with Slack or GitHub and 50 other tools.

RescueTime cannot offer an invoice and can only be used offline. However, it helps streamline the workflow by reducing distractions and increasing transparency.

Timely

Timely

Traditional time-tracking tools often suffer from the inconvenience of manual data entry, but Timely takes a different approach by automating this process. Timely offers a dependable digital record of your team’s daily time allocation, eliminating the need for manual input.

In addition to time tracking, Timely also serves as a project and task management platform, providing a comprehensive solution for managing work and projects.

TopTracker

TopTracker, a remote work monitoring tool, is great if you are interested in integrating time tracking into billing or invoicing.

This tool allows you to track your time, take screenshots, and then create, send, and process invoices all within one platform.

3. Software for Employee Monitoring: Task & Project Management

Asana

Starting with the first project management tool on our list, Asana excels in task creation, assignment, communication, and priority management. It enables you to break down projects into tasks and subtasks, organize your team into subgroups, and utilize reporting features to monitor activity across various time intervals.

Trello

Trello

Trello allows employees to work together on projects, manage their time, and organize tasks.

It uses cards, lists, and boards to organize things. Managers will love Trello’s advanced reporting features, which allow them to see exactly what their team is up to.

HiveDesk

HiveDesk lets you track the time of your employees. You can also use it to automatically track time spent by your employees (which is great if you hire freelancers), task management, activity tracking, and the ability to capture screenshots.

Everhour

Everhour can be used as a time-tracking tool and a project management tool. This allows you to keep track of remote employees. You can view a dashboard that pulls data from all your platforms, including tasks, projects, etc.

It can track time spent individually and collectively, assign tasks, and many other uses.

Conclusion

Keeping tabs on remote employees doesn’t have to be a complex task. With the appropriate remote work monitoring tool, tracking your team’s activities becomes straightforward, ensuring productivity remains high among your remote workforce.

Read also:

Maximize your productivity with FocusCommit

FocusCommit is a cutting-edge productivity app that integrates a Pomodoro timer, Kanban board, and the Getting Things Done approach to help you stay productive and meet your goals

Defeat distractions, concentrate at any time

Smart Pomodoro Timer

Manage tasks On The Go

Full Integration with the GTD Methodology


BLOG50

Use this coupon to get 50% off for the first year

Photo of author

Monica Nguyen

Meet the mind behind our productivity insights—a finance professional who has mastered the art of efficiency in the fast-paced corporate world. Harnessing a variety of productivity methods, she has not only excelled in her roles at major multinational corporations but also coached her colleagues on achieving peak performance. She brings to our blog a wealth of experience in applying disciplined focus and organizational skills to both her work and teachings, ensuring that our readers receive practical and effective strategies to enhance their daily productivity.