Best Spy Apps for Employee Monitoring (Based on Real Experience!)

Hybrid work continues to gain significance post the global COVID-19 pandemic. But, the increase in remote work makes it difficult to track employee efficiency and productivity despite their importance. 

Moreover, most business owners, HR managers, and directors don’t like hybrid work models because it leaves them in the dark regarding the productivity of their employees – insights accessible on-premises on employees’ work quality and quantity, including reasons for any changes aren’t available.

Hybrid work enables employees to gain flexibility in their work days, yet some struggle with time management. Other employees fail to differentiate the thin line between work and home, leading to burnout.

Benefits of Employee Monitoring Software

Remote employee monitoring software tracks anything from external drive access and keystrokes to generating pre-scheduled and live reports. However, no two employee tracking software is the same – whereas some are ideal for particular tasks, others offer unique features for everyday use.

With employee monitoring software, small business owners can access insights into how their workers spend their office time when working remotely. Systems for monitoring employees can track the use of applications and internet browsing, capture screenshots of user tasks, block apps and content, and generate insightful reports.

Traditionally used to log suspicious behavior, monitor employee activity, and detect threats, the application also tracks wellness and health, productivity, and enhances employee engagement. Other benefits of remote employee monitoring software include:

• Time tracking and complete traceability and visibility into employees’ operations.
• Monitoring bad behavior and misconduct of employees.
• Important data aggregation on employee productivity.
• Grouping and customization of employees for the management of a large yet distributed workforce.
• Report generation on different productivity metrics.
• Keystroke monitoring and data visualization (such as keystroke aggregation and syncing with video recordings for better visualization of employee activity).

Here’re some of the best user activity monitoring software based on ease of use, cost-effectiveness, and features required to track employee productivity, activity, and cyber-security.

Top 5 Employee Monitoring Software

1. ActivTrak

Built with informative dashboards, ActivTrak provides a comprehensive summary of employees’ performance and trends in productivity. The employee monitoring software helps business managers to set benchmarks for workforce productivity and monitor the progress of their teams towards attainment of goals.

With the ability to track user activity in real-time, the employee monitoring program can allow you to assess your workers without causing disruption to their work. The weekly coaching summaries are ideal for one-on-one sessions when helping individuals in your team with their problematic areas.

The weekly summaries also support tracking of employee progress to assess their action plans for efficacy and change them accordingly. The program is compatible with Salesforce, Xero, Zapier, and other productivity tools. It has both a paid and free plan – the latter supports only 3 users.

2. Monitask

Drive employee productivity levels with Monitask. The software tracks employee performance for productivity. The project and task management features facilitate on-time project delivery within your working budget.

The Monitask productivity monitoring software enables task analysis to help you determine the time taken to completion. The time-tracking feature can help business owners to deploy plans aimed at easing and simplifying tasks, ensuring they take shorter times to complete.

With access to a list of apps and websites in use, you can use the employee monitoring software to determine how your workers use their PCs during work hours. The software enables you to find out how unproductive employees spend their time.

Use the screen capture feature (takes screenshots randomly) to keep your employees working and dissuade them from using apps and sites unrelated to their work. The software is compatible with Asana, Trello, Slack, Jira, and ClickUp, and offers a free 10-day trial and a paid plan.

3. Connecteam

Featuring the ability to manage employee absence and track time in real-time, Connecteam tracks employee productivity. It can help you dispatch jobs and schedule shifts to ensure that there are sufficient human resources for quicker completion of existing projects.

Use the productivity software’s communication tools to send newsletters, announcements, and updates to all workers, ensuring they have access to updates and news about the company. The software uses online forms to track the productivity of remote employees.

With the workforce tracking software, you can customize online forms to meet unique company requirements. The Connecteam mobile app feature gives access to track completion rates, review forms, and important files shareable with shareholders and critical files. The free plan supports about 50 users, while the paid version starts with the same number of employees.

4. Kickidler

Designed with various productivity tools, the Kickidler software can help you with the management of remote workers and enhance their work efficiency. The monitoring software visually assesses employees’ ongoing work without disruption. It also generates timesheets and reports for efficient monitoring of work hours.

The program’s violation tracking ability helps protect clients and the company itself. The software detects violations in work schedules to ensure that clients receive service level agreements promptly.

Use its ability to record a computer’s entire employee activity history to ensure they don’t violate company policies.

5. BambooHR

The all-in-one HR tool targets both small and medium enterprises for easy management of your business. Remote teams or employees working from home can easily sign in and out of the system from anywhere. Its mobile version is compatible with Android and iOS mobile platforms.

The employee monitoring software features attendance and time monitoring for automated, timely approvals and accurate timesheets. Your employees can use the time tracking feature to log category-specific hours, such as projects, meetings, client calls, etc.

The feature ensures that business owners or managers can allocate more human resources to projects or activities in need. With the BambooHR’s ability to monitor paid time offs, you’re able to reassign resources and employee responsibilities (for those on holiday) accordingly.

Conclusion

Now you have a list of employee monitoring apps to choose from. When choosing the right employee productivity monitoring tool, ensure that it’s built with the features you need to track the performance of your workforce.

The best spy apps for employee monitoring are also compatible with various productivity tools, such as Slack, Jira, Salesforce, and QuickBooks, among others. With the right tracking software, you won’t just access reports on employee performance and efficiency but also how to improve system deficits.