The #5 Best Employee Monitoring Software for Remote Working

Even before the events of 2020, businesses have been leveraging remote working capabilities to benefit their business, reducing office space and equipment expenditure, hiring talent from outside geographical limits, and promoting a workplace culture that employees enjoy. Of course, remote working comes with certain risks to productivity and, most importantly, security. Here are some of the most effective employee monitoring software solutions for businesses that want the benefits of flexibility while managing the risks.

#1 – Teramind

This is one of the most comprehensive employee tracking software applications on the market. It’s tracking functionality is fully integrated with other popular remote working apps, allowing you to track any user activity from screen recordings, tracking emails and keystrokes, tracking Zoom sessions and even getting live views of screens. It is functional for on-site and cloud environments have powerful threat detection and have good privacy compliance and access control. However, this does come at a price – and while it’s employee tracking, compliance and privacy controls are very powerful, it doesn’t have much in the way of project management features.

#2 – Hubstaff

This is a good option if you are more focussed on keeping your employees productive while they work from home. It has strong project management and reporting tools, but the features that are a real draw for businesses are the timesheets and tracking tools. The timesheets conveniently combine tracking with billing and payroll and are accessible on remote mobile devices. It has screenshot and keystroke capture and monitoring, job site and geolocation features, and makes scheduling for shift work easy.

#3 – Interguard

Another solution with a strong focus on productivity and engagement is Interguard, which uses data analytics capabilities to useful produce alerts and insights for managing productivity issues. It’s a cloud-hosted application with an intuitive user-interface, simple search functions and endpoint lockdown capabilities. In addition to monitoring keystrokes and screenshots, the data this app gathers can be used for audit trails, playback and behavioural benchmarking. You can monitor emails, websites (and block certain websites), IM and chats, file usage, active and idle time, and more. The only downside is that this is better suited to medium to larger organisations, as you need 11 subscribers annually to access the solution.

#4 – SentryPC

An alternative that’s ideal for small businesses is SentryPC, which offers real-time monitoring, content filtering, location monitoring, keystroke tracking and even detects portable drives. It’s exceptionally affordable, doesn’t have a minimum subscriber limit, and is easy to install and use. It’s compatible with iOS and Microsoft and is cloud-hosted so it can be accessed from anywhere. You can customise your setup as every package offers the same functionality (more expensive packages offer more storage for data, screenshots, etc.) and it has decent reporting capabilities too.

#5 – ActivTrak

ActivTrak is another good option for small businesses that need a solution for remote workers. It’s affordable (it’s free for up to 3 users), and different packages are available for businesses with different tracking requirements, so you don’t end up paying for features you don’t need. You can also pay for add-on features as your business needs change. This software application is a good combination of productivity management and activity monitoring, offering features including a productivity tracker, keyboard and mouse activity tracking (no keystroke logging), real-time monitoring feed, application usage, website blocking, screenshots, and detailed reporting for individual users and the organisation as a whole.

In addition, you get access to a new feature, the Productivity Lab, which shows global trends and advice on managing remote worker productivity, how to adapt your expectations and business strategy, and much more.

Make Remote Working Simple, Safe and Productive for Your Small Business

As a managed IT services provider, we can partner with your business to make remote working more effective, more productive and more secure than ever before. Otto works with small and medium-sized businesses in diverse fields to bring the benefits of tech, cloud services, cybersecurity and collaborative tools to you, affordably.