Remote work culture, which is often perceived to be a safe and convenient option, particularly during the COVID-19 outbreak, may turn out to be just the opposite. Ever since the remote work culture has taken over, an increasing number of companies have expressed anxiety over potential cyberattacks that may occur due to insider activities. These could be intentional and unintentional activities that employers need to watch out for, especially while their employees are working remotely.
With most employees using personal computers and internet connections, this new normal has undoubtedly increased the attack surface. In the given conditions, the only way to counter this issue is by increasing organizational security by closely monitoring employee activities.
You can do this by choosing to deploy one of the best employee monitoring software available. However, you must pick one that is right for your business and to pick such an alternative, let us now explore some of the best options available.
EmpMonitor
EmpMonitor is one of the best employee monitoring software available for small and mid-sized businesses that wish to help companies remotely monitor their employees. These could be agencies, IT firms, financial service providers, or other businesses struggling to monitor employee activities with limited resources.
As such, businesses may not want to spend much on security and administrative tasks, using EmpMonitor solves many problems. It provides a one-stop solution for the scheduling, monitoring, and tracking of employee activities through its various functions.
From randomized screenshots to application-wise usages, this software records it all and stores it securely. It even lets you pull out individual and team-wise productivity reports that are easy to understand.
So, by spending a few minutes every week, the Manager can figure out who is doing what and plan preventive measures accordingly. Depending on the size of an organization, this employee monitoring tool may cost anywhere between $3 to $5 per month for every employee monitored through it.
Hubstaff
Hubstaff is the go-to productivity tracking tool for businesses that is laser-focused on employee productivity. Its numerous features such as scheduling, time tracking, online timesheets, and reporting make it easier to pull out useful data for several business functions.
You can use it to schedule tasks and keep up with their status via timesheets, while not missing out on productivity metrics that directly impact your employee budget.
These timesheets can be easily accessed on mobile devices, which makes it perfect for on-the-go entrepreneurs and managers that need to juggle between product procurement, asset management, client meetings, and other core managerial responsibilities.
Managers can also choose to receive pre-scheduled periodical emails consisting of individual or team-wise productivity reports, which provides better insights. This employee monitoring software also comes with additional features such as GPS tracking, which can be used to monitor and track field employees.
You can also combine remote employee tracking features with field employee tracking features. That makes it ideal for e-commerce businesses and other delivery-based businesses that rely on both online and offline staff.
So, you can maintain social distancing, without losing track of any of your employees, whether remote or on-field. If you run a small business that isn’t concerned about anything beyond productivity and payroll, then you can immensely benefit from this tool.
Interguard
Interguard is the best employee monitoring software for businesses that have more intricate requirements. It lets the administrator track everything from an employee’s geolocation to website searches and everything in between.
With its multifarious features, Interguard makes it easier to measure employee productivity, comply with legal requirements, and safeguard critical business data. That makes it the perfect solution for businesses in need of a tool to prevent data loss and monitor employee activity, besides complying with regulatory requirements.
Its easy-to-use interface delivers a superior user experience, even if it is the very first monitoring tool that an administrator or business owner is deploying.
Also, the data is stored and classified in a manner that makes it easy to comprehend and improves overall security. The key focus is on recording and storing email activities connected to attachments, which in most cases are the very reason for security breaches.
So, this employee monitoring software closely monitors and stores all activities related to attachments, regardless of whether the email has been deleted.
Also, companies can use Interguard to create group-wise usability frameworks. So you can create groups and assign different sets of permissions when it comes to social media usage, which can be very effective in larger organizations.
It does not stop there! Employers can also define keywords that trigger and track employees using social media platforms for job searches. So, if your company permits LinkedIn, but someone’s been using it to look for a job, then you can spot that person quite easily.
Besides email and social media monitoring, Interguard also lets administrators track file activity, instant messaging, screenshots, website searches, website browser history, application-wise usage, and more.
The monthly pricing of this employee monitoring software would be around $99 ($9 per user) as you need to buy it for a minimum of eleven users. So, as we have already mentioned, this is the best employee monitoring tool for specialized businesses or businesses with larger operations.
Work Examiner (Controlio)
Work Examiner is a time-tested employee monitoring solution for both on-premise and remote employees. For remote employee management, business owners would have to invest in Controlio, which is Work Examiner’s cloud solution.
As the name implies, Controlio lets you control your employees and monitor all their web activities. With its extremely powerful web filters, this employee monitoring tool makes regulating employee activities much easier. You can use it to control activities that could adversely affect employee productivity or cause security concerns.
In other words, you can lay down the ground rules and allow or disallow specific actions according to your company’s internal protocols. So, employers can use it to restrict access to potentially harmful websites, control the number of browsing hours, and manage several other activities.
Also, employers can monitor literally everything that an employee does on the internet. That includes web searches, file transfers, keystrokes, application usage, and more. The most exciting feature, however, is its live view feature, which lets employers check out real-time activities of their employees.
Also, the data exchanged between the employee’s system and that of the administrator is encrypted and securely stored. Coming to its pricing, the makers of this employee monitoring tool adopt an altogether different approach.
Unlike other employee surveillance tools, Controlio does not charge a monthly or yearly subscription fee, but a one-time license for every PC monitored. The one-time license fee is priced between $25 to $60 per PC, depending on two factors — the number of licenses purchased and the choice of a pricing plan. For organizations with over 150 PCs, custom pricing is available.
Time Doctor
Time Doctor lets you manage three critical business functions through a single platform — employee surveillance, project management, and payments. You can use Time Doctor for both employee payroll and client billing purposes, which makes it the best employee monitoring software for agencies and professional consultancies.
As such, businesses may not have a dedicated finance department. So it becomes difficult to perform recurring functions such as raising invoices and processing payments. So, the ability to do all of this through the same interface makes things easier.
Businesses can even take payroll management a step forward by setting up automatic payment clearance based on different hourly rates. The software then verifies the number of hours logged in by your employees and processes payments based on their individual hourly rates. Doing this puts the entire payroll system on autopilot, which makes things easier for smaller agencies and consultancies.
Time Doctor also performs other monitoring functions like tracking web and app usage, social media monitoring, activity tracking, idle time monitoring, attendance recording, and more.
Based on these metrics, the administrator can create employee performance reports to easily measure employee productivity. Moreover, businesses can integrate this software with technologies they are already using such as Trello, Asana, Slack, GitHub, and several others.
Time Doctor is, however, a subscription-based employee monitoring software and therefore charges a monthly fee between $7 and $20 per user. Although the price is slightly higher than most employee monitoring tools, one gets more for every dollar paid.
Teramind
Teramind is yet another solution for businesses concerned about insider threats due to the remote work culture. For such enterprises, Teramind is the best employee surveillance software as it comes with all the necessary capabilities to thwart security risks caused by employees.
Basically, Teramind records the behavioral pattern of every employee and creates a behavioral baseline. So, if the employee deviates from this behavioral baseline, then the software shoots out alerts to the administrator.
If the deviation appears to be critical, then the administrator can quickly choose to monitor that employee, in real-time. Teramind’s real-time monitoring allows employers to monitor emails, web pages, social media, and more.
Employers can also access recorded screenshots or have the employee’s screen video recorded to ensure better compliance. However, Teramind’s cloud solution can only be accessed to monitor five or more endpoints, which makes it unsuitable for small businesses.
ActivTrak
ActivTrak is a complete solution for mid-sized and large businesses trying to remotely monitor their workforce. It comes with all the capabilities required for workflow management, insider threat detection, and productivity enhancement.
You can deploy this software remotely on your employee’s PCs and monitor USB file transfers, emails, chats, screenshots, and more. You can also generate reports based on individual or group productivity to know the most productive or unproductive employees. Reports can also be created based on other metrics such as application usage, website usage, and more.
These reports indicate overall usage which provides useful insights to identify and block certain websites and applications. Other essential features include setting alerts for specific activities for the termination of applications, and email notifications for certain deviations.
Customers can also seek assistance from ActivTrak’s technical team over chat, email, and phone. This employee surveillance software’s annual subscription plan costs around $7.20 per month for every user. Considering the many benefits that come with it, the price seems quite a bargain.
Final Conclusion
To get the most out of your purchase, consider picking an employee tracking software based on the nature and size of the business. Another key deciding factor is the duration for which your business is likely to operate remotely.
In case of a long-term transition, you can consider something like Controlio, which charges a one-time license fee. However, if you have a short-term requirement, consider picking one that offers monthly subscription plans.
The abovementioned list is a diverse compilation of some of the best employee monitoring software available. So, regardless of your needs or business type, you will find a suitable option in this list.