How Work From Home Software Can Help Avoid Goldbricking in Distant Workforce

It was not even a year ago when we considered remote work to be a luxury. Who would have thought about the Coronavirus pandemic, and who would have speculated it to become this gruesome? Nevertheless, employers were not really ready for this, the only reason why they never thought of training their employees beforehand. 

As a result, only a few employees are used to working from their homes. WFH comes with various challenges, goldbricking being the worst of them all. Goldbricking is the phenomenon of working less than expected and still getting paid equal to other colleagues. And it is quite evident that the phenomenon is more prevalent in distant workforce. Employees tend to work less with practically no one checking on them regularly. 

Nevertheless, there are various tools and work from home software available in the market that assist employers to track and monitor their remote employees. These tools not only improve productivity but also avoid goldbricking in the online and offline premises. Here is how they do so in real-time: 

1. Stealth Supervision 

Stealthmode Technology

Some tools and software in the market let you supervise and track employees' activities stealthily without them knowing about it. You can monitor remote employees for hours, and their systems won't display the tool running in the background as the Taskbar won't recognize it. This way, they won't ever be able to predict when you start monitoring them and be more attentive to their assigned tasks at any given time. 

They will not be able to figure out the exact time when the software captures their real-time activities in the form of screenshots or keystrokes. They also won't be able to switch it off from running in the background, so they cannot pretend to be more productive at certain hours. They will ultimately have no option left in their hands other than to work during their 9 to 5 schedule. 

2. Transparency & Accuracy

Complete Transparency

You will get a clear picture of the total working and non-working hours out of the total hours spent on their system. You can also hold them responsible for their recorded actions and discuss with them about their working schedule. This way, you can understand the employees that work more dedicatedly on the assigned task and work on developing skills of the ones who don’t. 

With more transparency in the premises comes more authority. The employees become more authoritative and accountable for their activities. They tend to work more because of being aware of the surveillance and become more productive over time. Some of the best tools that let you do so are EmpMonitor, Teramind, etc. 

3. Reports & Assessment  

Preparation Reportsheet 

Yo get a list of the most frequently used apps and most visited websites along with regular reports and graphs of the working schedule of all employees. So you can assess all the sites to understand their sources of distraction and take necessary action to diminish their wastage of time. These reports also indicate potential online and offline threats that you can avoid beforehand to inhibit any form of malware. 

Regular reports will also ensure that the employees stay more productive throughout the working hours and avoid taking more breaks. They will also ensure that the workers stop wasting their time on social media platforms and watching YouTube, and focus more on working on official files in their 9 to 5 working schedule. 

Conclusion 

Productivity loss is a real issue. And not everyone knows how to deal with it. Using a  best work from home software and tools to track employee activities is a commendable solution to this problem. It not only records the real working hours but also inhibits data leakage from the premises. Choose the best one for your organization and ensure higher productivity at the premises. 

Also, See This Video To Know About The Best Employee Monitoring Solution For Business.

Top 05 Productivity Tracking Software To Look Out This Year

With the expansion of workforces and commencement of work remotely, there is an increasing need for employee monitoring software among the organizations. The culture of remote working is becoming strikingly popular among the masses- from working from home to fieldwork and freelancing. 

To ensure that there remains no loss of productivity and to restore transparency in the workforce, employers prefer legally tracking their employees' activities. Several other reasons favor this approach too, for instance, data security, task management, progress accuracy, etc. 

There are various productivity tracking software available in the market, but only the best ones come with the best features and a safe platform. But before deploying any of them in the premises, you need to make sure that they are safe and secure, or else your data might be at risk. 

Below, I have mentioned a list of some of the most reliable, top-rated tools in the market: 

1. EmpMonitor 

This software tops the list. It is extremely safe to use, reliable, has the most easy-to-use platform, and has extremely cheap plans. It is one of the most top-rated, yet cheapest tools in the market that offers real-time monitoring. Out of all the tools I have come across, EmpMonitor offers some of the best features in the market, such as: 

• Productivity measurement
• Cloud storage
• Tracking the most used app 
• Stealth mode
• Keystroke recording
• User logs
• IP whitelisting
• Generating reports 

EmpMonitor offers a 15-Days FREE trial for 5 users, and their cheapest plan starts from $5/user/month for 10 users. There is no lifetime free version of this software. 

2. Teramind 

It is one of the most popular tools in the market that offers a user-centric security approach. It offers thorough reporting and analytics along with cloud accessibility to user data. Here are some of the other noteworthy features of Teramind: 

• Insider threat detection
• Automated behavioral rules
• Alerts and notifications
• Employee activity monitoring
• Idle time monitoring
• Screen activity recording
• Browser history
• Employee email monitoring
• Remote control
• Time tracking 

This  work from home productivity monitoring software offers a 7-Days FREE trial for and is a bit more expensive than other tools. Their cheapest plan starts from $12/user/month. 

3. Time Doctor 

It is a SaaS-based software. The best thing about Time Doctor is its device compatibility. Meaning, the software operates in almost all the devices- be it Mac, Windows, Chromium, iOS, Linus or  Android OS. Some of the best features of this web-based software are: 

• Time tracking
• Computer work session monitoring
• Reminders
• Screenshots
• Invoicing
• Reporting tools
• Integrations with other software
• Project management tools integration
• Webcam capture
• White label portal
• Employee attendance tracking 

Time Doctor also falls in a bit of an expensive range. It offers a 14-Days FREE trial, and its cheapest plan starts from $12/month for a single user. 

4. Hubstaff 

Hubstaff offers various user activity monitoring features, along with the options for accurate billing and sending payments. It also generates employee-wise and date-wise reports, which is unique to it. Apart from this, it comes with the following amazing features: 

• Time tracking
• Billing and invoicing
• Time Scheduling
• Employee Tracking
• Time and task reporting
• Smartphone access
• Project prioritization
• Manual timesheets and stopwatch
• Geofencing
• Payroll automation 

Hubstaff does come with a free version with very limited features along with a 14-Days FREE trial. Their basic plan starts from $7/user/month for 2 users. 

5. ActivTrak 

It has a quite simple but easy to comprehend dashboard that caters to every organization- from a startup to a large firm with over 1000 employees. ActivTrak is one of the most top-rated productivity monitoring software. Some of its highlighted features are: 

• Employee activity monitoring
• Productivity analysis
• Screen activity recording
• Browser history
• Employee email monitoring
• File tracking
• Blurred screenshots
• Automated alerts 

ActivTrak also comes with a lifetime free plan for 3 users. It also offers a FREE demo, and its cheapest plan starts from $7.20/user/month. 

Also watch: How To Measure Productivity Of Employee According To The Days In A Week With EmpMonitor?

Conclusion 

Every employer needs to be aware of their employees' activities, no matter if they work remotely or in front of their eyes. After assessing a lot of tools, I have listed the best ones above, my favorite being EmpMonitor. However, you can compare the features of other software too, and then consider the best productivity tracking software for your workforce. 

5 Extraordinary Features Of Stealth Monitoring Software For Workforce Management

Business owners around the world want to ensure the data security and productivity of their business. Considering the catastrophic event that leads to the fall of business around the world, many companies are looking for remote working options. And it also leads to the vulnerabilities of data breaching issues. Today managing a workforce is quite a challenge for business owners and especially when most of the people are looking for remote working options. In such a scenario, what companies around the globe need is - stealth monitoring software that can monitor the work activities of staffers' computers while being in stealth mode.

Here I have enlisted some of the features of invisible monitoring software that can help you with your workforce management.

Invisible Screenshot Monitoring-

One of the most crucial features of stealth monitoring is the ability to capture screenshots of employee's computer activities while being in invisible mode. Using this feature, managers can check whether their staffers are working or not. If one of the employees is spending their business hours doing unproductive activities like accessing social media, chatting, or accessing unwanted sites, then management can take action against that. While there are also some situations when employees fall for phishing traps or do some suspicious activities. In such a case, having a reliable stealth monitoring software can help you to track those activities invisibly. And you can take preventive measures against that instant to ensure the data security of your business.

Invisible Web History Monitoring-

Considering the data security, employers also need to be cautious about insider threats. Since there might be some of the employees who can make unintentional or intentional errors, which could hurt the productivity of the business. But if you have a stealth monitoring software like EmpMonitor by your side, you can remotely track the real-time web activities of each and every employee. And in case of any doubt, you can take immediate action to prevent productivity loss in your company.

Invisible Application Monitoring-

Besides the above-shown features, EmpMonitor can also monitor the applications that your staffers are using. If someone is accessing important files on a spreadsheet or checking the analytic data related to any application. You can easily find out about the ones who have been using that particular application.

Example- For suppose if an employee in your organization is found to be guilty of using applications like Skype or Telegram to leak the business data. Then management can easily catch suspicious actions of that person using application monitoring. And that employee couldn't be able to find out that his actions are being monitored by the management.

Invisible Document Recording-

If you are unsure about the security of the business data in your company, then what you need is document monitoring. EmpMonitor can help you to auto record the essential business documents regarding your business. And all the information about the working activities of your staffers will get stored in the cloud memory. Without having permission from the admin, nobody could be able to access that data. In case you need to access any business data, you can export the recorded documents to check the work progress of your business.

Invisible Network Protection-

Moreover, having stealth monitoring software like EmpMonitor, you can use firewall security to secure the network. So that staffers could not be able to access websites and applications that can harm your business. By controlling the network, admin can also block the malicious ports in order to get the entry of malware and virus. Indeed admin can also share the stealth monitoring software access to the managers and team leaders to inspect the computer activities of staffers in their own departments.

Wrapping Words:

In this article, we have discussed some of the extraordinary features of stealth monitoring software that can help the employer with better management of their workforce. Whether you are uncertain about data security or ensuring productivity in your business, using the EmpMonitor stealth mode tracking, you can achieve better results for your business. As you can easily keep a bird's eye on the work of your staffers. While they can’t be able to learn that you are monitoring their computer activities.

If you have any further inquiries, you can ask us in the comment section given below.

05 Best Productivity Monitoring Software

Productivity monitoring software is a necessary tool to manage and improve the productivity of employees. Whether your employees are working from home or office, a monitoring agent is important for an organization. As the number of employees increases, it gets harder to keep an eye on all of them. Therefore, a virtual assistant is needed who can track every employee without any issues. 

There are countless productivity monitoring tools available on the internet, but which is the best?

To answer your question, we have listed the top five monitoring tools which will help you manage the productivity of your employees better.

• EmpMonitor

The first in our list is EmpMonitor. It is a great productivity monitoring software with amazing features such as – 

1. Stealth monitoring.
2. Screen capture.
3. Top apps used.
4. Employee productivity tracking
5. User logs.
6. Keystroke logging.
7. Top websites used.
8. Cloud storage.
9. IP whitelisting.

With such amazing features, EmpMonitor leads our charts. The best feature of this tool is stealth monitoring, as with the help of it you can track activities of your employees, without them noticing. The app doesn’t show on recent and neither on task manager. EmpMonitor also has a free trial period of 15 days, in which all the features are present, including stealth monitoring.

• Time Doctor

Time doctor is also an employee tracking software available for Windows, Mac, Linux, chromium, iOS, and android. It is similar to EmpMonitor but has some distinct features mentioned below –

1. Time tracking
2. Screenshots
3. Chat monitoring
4. Clients feature
5. Web & App usage
6. Payroll
7. All device support
8. Project management tool integration. 
9. Timely alerts
10. GPS tracking
11. White label portal
12. Off-track reminders
13. Webcam capture
14. Employee attendance tracking
15. Break tracking

The best feature of this tool is payroll, as with the help of it, you can easily manage payrolls of the employees in your organization based on the performance. Time Doctor also has a free trial which lasts for 14 days. 

• ActivTrak

ActivTrak is monitoring software that has a user-friendly dashboard. Its operational efficiency and physical tracking agent are the best features, among others. This tool has two plans; the first one is a free trial which you can use as long as you want, but with limited features, and the next one is the paid one, which costs $7.20/user/month. 

Along with the earlier mentioned features, ActivTrak also includes the following – 

1. Physical tracking agent
2. Stealth Monitoring
3. File tracking
4. Keyword tracking
5. Blurred screenshots
6. Screen Capture
7. Automated alerts
8. User privacy setting

• Teramind

Teramind has some of the best features, like DLP, including employee monitoring. DLP or Data Loss Prevention feature ensures the credibility of data. Along with these features, it contains the following features as well – 

1. Insider Risk Management.
2. Automated behavior Rules.
3. Employee session recording.
4. Employee Internet Monitoring.
5. File tracking.
6. Employee Email capture.
7. Employee Productivity Monitoring.

It is a very popular tool because it allows both cloud and premise functionality. Teramind offers a free trial period of 7 to 14 days, based on the package you choose. 

• Hubstaff

At last, we have Hubstaff. It is similar to the Time Doctor as it is available for both mobile and desktop. This tool is great for employers whose work involves fieldwork like delivery of goods and such. The reason behind it is that with the help of it, you can easily monitor field employees by tracking their mobile devices. 

The features included in this software are – 

1. Time tracking.
2. GPS tracking.
3. Online timesheets.
4. Reporting.
5. Productivity monitoring.
6. Team scheduling.
7. Payroll Automation.
8. Geofencing.
9. Easy invoices.
10. Offline time tracking.

Hubstaff also has a free trial period, which lasts for as long as you want, but with limited features. Its paid plan starts from $5 and goes up to $20.

Conclusion

There you have it, five best productivity monitoring software that will help you manage your employees better and more effectively. All the before-mentioned tools have one thing in common, .i.e.; employee monitoring and they all do a great job at it. In the end, it all boils down to what additional features you want in your tool, and if you ask me for my pick, I would say EmpMonitor because it has all the features that are needed to cover different industries, plus the stealth feature is simply amazing.

How To Increase The Trust In Your Remote Workplace?

In the business world, the ability to work remotely is a perk for employees. And nowadays, most of the job aspirants also look for the opportunities which let them work remotely. Obviously, becoming a remote worker has many advantages, as they handle their professional and personal business more efficiently. For those who have been working for a traditional nine-to-fiver work time, it can't be more than luxury if their employers let them work from home. Fortunately, employers are also looking to hire individuals from remote workers who can do their job diligently to produce fruitful results for the business.  

Although it seems difficult for business owners to hire trustworthy staffers who can work from their remote workplace. To overcome that, employers can also opt for remote worker monitoring software or employee tracking software like EmpMonitor using which they can monitor the activities of their employees and also gauge their trust for the organization.

If you also want to increase reliable staffers in your company who can work remotely, then you should check this article.

High-Trust Culture-

Though an Employee Tracking Software can help you to enhance productivity in your business. What about employees' morale? If you want to have employees who work faithfully for your business. Then you will have to be caring for the well being of your staffers. When you treat your employees well, they would also try to give their best for the business. And it would eventually grow the high-trust culture in your business.

Here I have shown four core values to achieve a high-trust culture in the business.

• Flexible Timing-

Employees having a flexible work schedule try to put extra effort into their work. So that they could be able to accomplish their every task on time. Giving a bit of independence to employees can also help the organization to boost their work motivation.

• Knowledge Sharing-

If you want diligent employees in the remote workplace, then you also need to work on enhancing the professional knowledge of your staffers. By sharing knowledge with other team members, it could not only help you to gain skillful staffers, but you will also be able to with the trust of your team members.

• Communication-

When you are working with a team, you need to make sure to have a robust communication. In the team, you will have to dialogue with each other to sort out business problems. Team members who actively interact with each other can work more diligently for the growth of the business.

• Work-Life Balance-

By allowing your employees to do their job from a remote workplace, you are also helping them to get a balance in their professional and personal life. Indeed it becomes easier for remote working employees to manage their work-life balance.

However, if you want to implement such values in your business, you can't neglect the possibility of having some idlers in your company who can waste time and effort that you have spent on their growth. In such a scenario, what you need is the best remote employee monitoring software like EmpMonitor. That can help you to monitor the activities of idlers in your organization while you can take preventive measures so that it would not affect the productivity of your business.

Have you been prepared to let your employees do their job from their remote workplace? If yes, then to achieve success for your business, you can follow the steps shown here. It can help you to win the faith of employees working in your organization.

• Find Diligent Employees-

Simply saying, you can't be able to judge the behavior of a person at a single glance. While monitoring the habits of a worker, you can learn about their characteristics. If an employee is punctual and finishing his deadline tasks on time, then you can assume that he can be productive while working remotely. Though you also need to consider the factor of communication and other behavior of employees. Remember, trust is not something that you can grow instantly.

• Opportunity To Grow-

Most of the companies can't be able to retain their diligent workers since they don't provide enough opportunities for the growth of their employees. It leads to the dissatisfaction amongst them. In such a case, employers should encourage such employees and let them enjoy some perks. While also providing opportunities to grow their professional knowledge. It will not only help you to gain faithful employees, but you could also gain better productivity efforts from your employees.

• Build Transparency In Your Business-

Transparency is essential in every business, especially when you are managing a team working from a remote workplace. As you can't be able to have a face to face conversation, you can rely on telecommuting options. Having the best remote workplace monitoring software like EmpMonitor, you could be able to keep track of every work activity of employees. While you can also learn about the various professional difficulties that your employees are facing during their work. By learning from their experience they would also grow their professional skill to be more productive for your business.

Final Words:

In this article, here I have shown you some of the ways of implementing which you can win the trust of employees for your business. I hope that the above shown ways could be helpful for you in achieving more success in your business. If you want to share your thoughts, kindly mention them in the comments section.

5 Best Productivity Monitoring Software For Your Remote Teams

In today's competitive world, a large number of companies have shifted towards the remote work system. Remote workforces have become increasingly common, but it poses a specific challenge. How do you know if your remote workers are actually working and not wasting time? Well, in such a case you can use a productivity monitoring software to track and measure your remote team productivity.

Here are top five productivity monitoring software for monitoring employee productivity -

EmpMonitor

EmpMonitor is an ultimate employee and productivity monitoring software engulfed with rich features. It helps you track the total productive and non productive hours of the entire company. Also, it helps employers to monitor employee computers in real time. You can know what your remote team is doing in real time. This software also records screenshots, keystrokes, block application installation,website filtering & blocking,social network blocking and much more.

This software comes with handy packages which are easily affordable. Insider threat detection and Data leak protection features are what make this software even more unique. 

This software setup and installation takes less than five minutes. It runs in 100% stealth mode and offers 15 days free trial (No credit card required).

DeskTime

DeskTime is an excellent and powerful automatic tracking software. This softwares offers the employers the feature to segregate applications used during the office hours as productive, neutral, and unproductive. This helps to measure how productive a particular employee is within the company.

It offers features such as offline time tracking, billing and invoicing, vacation/leave tracking, overtime calculations, and many more. It offers a 14 days free trial to its users.

TimeDoctor

Time Doctor is an excellent employee tracking and time management software. This software tracks employees in real time and helps eliminate idle time. This software records employee computer screenshots in every three minutes and tracks internet usage too. Employers can even get detailed reports of apps used and websites visited by employees. 

It has got some really interesting features such as calendar management, employee scheduling, overtime calculation, employee activity monitoring, productivity, analysis, remote control, payroll management, timesheet management, and many more. It offers a 30 days free trial.

Asana

Asana is an empyreal monitoring software that helps its users to measure their time and manage their budget effectively. It allows users to set deadlines and priorities, share assigned tasks, all from one single dashboard. It's feature named Harvest Timer is what makes this software unique. Using this feature you can stay in the loop and measure how much time a particular user spends on respective projects and assignments of the day.

Some of its great features include - creation of custom calendars and views, my task list, track tasks, add followers, Email bridge, etc. 

Hubstaff

Hubstaff is a magnificent employee time tracking and monitoring software. Know what your employees are doing in real time through activity monitoring, screenshot capture, reporting, and application usage. This software runs in the background without interrupting the users screen. One of the finest things about this software is it integrates with more than 30 business and project management apps like Asana, Basecamp, GitHub, Trello, PayPal. 

It includes features such as productivity analysis, screen activity recording, billing and invoicing, billable and non-billable hours, offline time tracking, mobile time tracking, timesheet management, and many more. It offers a 14 days free trial. 

These were the best productivity monitoring software for your remote workforce. Choose the right one as per your company needs and start using it. Remember, productivity is the key to success. If you use such software you will be able to track, manage the employees as well as it will help you work on where your team is lacking behind. 

Moreover, productivity monitoring software is becoming an important tool for companies to automate the task of monitoring and streamlining the workflow. 

How to select the best productivity tracking software in 2020?

Currently, we are living in an environment where we have to think twice before going out for groceries or daily needs. A micro-sized virus has kicked the entire earth and constrained humans to self-arrest themselves in their houses.

However, thanks to the innovative minds, who have given the best technological wingmates like the internet, productivity tracking software, video conferencing, and other unique assets, due to which tech and IT firms are still efficiently driving the wheels of their organization.

Well, moving to our major point, which is very much required to allow employees to work remotely, we are going to discuss the most valuable asset, which is nothing but the employee monitoring tool- A tool that allows administrators to track all the activities done by an employee on the computer.

Why employee tracking software?

Employees and productivity are the two different faces of the same coin. If one stopped the other would automatically get destroyed. Hence as an employer, you always have to observe whether your workforce is giving their best in their working hours or just wasting time doing their personal things.

Where monitoring every single activity of an employer, when they are in front of the eyes is quite challenging, then how can you trust the one who is working remotely from home!

For preventing this situation, brilliant minds have come with a tool called productivity tracking software.

What is employee tracking software?

Employee monitoring software is the set of programs, that once installed in the computer, runs in the background without even letting them know and maps every single activity done by the user in the system.

By doing so, it allows the administrator of the company to monitor employees' computers from the central location without any pause.

Hence it helps the company to find skills in employees, segregate between the hard worker and lazy ones, detect data breaches, and many more.

Now the clock's needle is stuck at the point where an employer has to select which employee productivity tracking software will be proved best for the company.

Well, within the next chapter of our article, you are going to get the solution to this dilemma.

Features you have to look before selecting the right employee tracking software.

Where the market is flooding with a lot of productivity monitoring tools, you have to act intelligently and choose the right one which is loaded with the following characteristics:

• Productivity measurement.

Select the software which has the ability to track the productivity proffered by the individual employee or the group of employees in the form of charts or graphs. And can provide you a deep insight into time spent on every single day of the work.

• Screenshot.

Purchase the software that will enable you to obtain a screenshot after every pre-decided time interval and get it saved automatically in the storage folder. By this, you can watch every single work done by the employee on the computer.

• Website tracking.

With the access to the internet, it is hard to stop any person from watching their favorites. Hence the only thing an employer can do is, track each URL visited by the employee during the working hours by letting them know that they are under surveillance. So select the tool that allows you to watch every single opened website along with the opening date and time.

• Log time of employees.

To map when an employee logged in to work and when logged out, you need to choose the tool, which can allow you to get a detailed insight of log hours of an employee along with the time wasted on tea and other breaks.

• Cloud storage facility.

Storing of data can be a big subject of concern since it is not that easy. Hence while selecting the mapping tool, you have to see whether the system has a cloud-based monitoring facility or not.

Time to wrap up:

Employees and their productivity are the fuels to run the vehicle of a company, hence they must be kept under monitoring.

To implement this practice smoothly, you need to install one of the best productivity tracking software in your organization.

Selecting the right monitoring tool is a big deal. Hence it must be done with a lot of concern. If you are also going to buy one for your organization, then you must check for the above features and select the one which has all features assembled on it.