One advantage to having everyone working together in the office is managers’ ability to check in with their direct reports. When everyone is in the same place, it’s clearer if someone is struggling with a task or needs motivational follow-up.
However, the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated that it’s quite possible for employees to work from out of the office either part- or full-time. This arrangement also provides advantages to employers. Many workers see remote work as a perk (which can bolster recruitment and retention), and employees working from home can mean less overhead for businesses.
For some employees, working remotely results in greater productivity—but for some, it can mean a dive in activity. So how do business leaders strike a balance between oversight and allowing employee autonomy?
There are several software options that track employee productivity. They range in capabilities from logging keystroke data to providing raw data synced with video, so higher-ups can see exactly what employees are up to at all times. Some software can even run in the background, so employees are not aware that their productivity is being monitored.
Business Network Consulting (BNC), one of the premiere IT companies in Austin, TX, can help you figure out what software will work best for you.
Three popular options
Teramind allows business leaders access to remote employees’ browsing history and email, as well as tracking productivity and time and providing remote access to managers. It permits supervisors to track employee behavior to root out who may be slipping behind or engaging in behavior that could be putting your business at risk for data theft.
If you’re only looking to track time, activity, and productivity, Connecteam can get the job done. It doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of some other software, but its intuitive design makes it easy to integrate.
Hubstaff is capable of many of the same functions as Teramind but does not allow for email monitoring.
There are a wide variety of products available for productivity monitoring. Interested business leaders need to determine what features are most important to them, as well as how transparent they intend to be with employees about the tracking—or whether they will know at all.
Cost for this kind of software is structured in multiple ways. Some charge per user, some per endpoint, and some with a flat annual fee. Depending on how robust you want the software to be, it may cost less than $10/user, but it could reach up to 10 times that amount if you require a lot of added features.
Implementing and onboarding
This is new turf for most businesses. If you are unsure of what you need or how to integrate the software into your existing business model, talk to BNC about its IT services in Austin, TX. BNC’s experts will walk you through the different choices you could make and help you understand what capabilities you need versus those you could do without.
