09 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT EMPLOYEE HOURS TRACKER

9 min readJun 22, 2020

An employee hour tracker has been used by every organization nowadays. Its popularity shot through the roof when the lockdown was implemented across the globe, and all companies started enforcing work from home. They had to find a solution to ensure 100% productivity, so they took the help of a tracker.

Like any other software, people have lots of questions about this tool too. So, we have done the research and listed out the nine most asked questions to help you better understand the software. Let’s get started.

1. WHAT IS AN EMPLOYEE HOURS TRACKER?

Employee hours tracker or employee productivity tracker is an application that monitors/tracks every activity of the employees. This application has replaced the traditional tracking methods, where a person used to watch over the employees and their output.

This tool is installed on the employees’ system, and it tracks everything by running in the background. There are many tracking software available on the internet, but the best one is EmpMonitor. It has lots of features that will help you track both remote and office employees.

Following the below steps you can track your employees’ productivity –

1. Log in to your EmpMonitor ID. You’ll be shown the following dashboard –

Here, you’ll get an overview of the productivity done by your team with the total number of employees working for you. It also shows who is present or online currently and who isn’t.

2. Go to Employee Details and add employees by clicking on the Add Employee button.

3. As you click on it, you will show the following box –

Fill in all the necessary details like name, email address, password, and then click on Add Employee at the bottom of the box. Do this for all your employees.

4. Once done, you’ll be shown all the added employees in this form –

Here you can see all the details regarding an employee, sort of a general overview. If you want to know the information about each employee, then go to step

5. For viewing the detailed report of an employee, click on the button shown below –

6. As you click on that button, you’ll be redirected to a new page –

Here you’ll be shown all the activities done by a particular employee. You can see the screen captures, top apps used, top websites visited, and much more. Using this, you can track down the aspects where they are lacking and help improve their productivity.

Once you set up everything, as mentioned above, you can easily track all the activities of your employees. EmpMonitor smartly tracks the productivity hours; it stops the time bar if the user hasn’t made any input via keyboard or mouse for a few minutes. It avoids the counting of idle time as productivity hour.

2. HOW DOES IT WORK?

The next and the most asked question is how it works?

First, you have to deploy this employee hour tracker on the employees’ systems. Then log in through the account provided by the vendor after the purchase; doing so will give you access to the administrative account. Once you are in, you’ll see a dashboard that will show all the productive and non-productive hours of your employees.

Some monitoring software also features stealth monitoring like EmpMonitor. This feature allows the tool to track all the activities of the employees without being detected. One other benefit of such a feature is that the tool does not show in the task manager, which makes it close to impossible for the user to find it.

However, there are some tools, which may have additional features like the one mentioned above. For example, few offer user logs and screen capture features, while others let you manage all the projects and calculate the payroll according to them.

3. WHY SHOULD YOU USE IT?

This question is asked by both employees and employers who haven’t yet adopted this tech in their organization. There are countless reasons for which an organization would use a monitoring application. But, we can’t cover them all, that’s why we will tell you about the most common ones.

As I mentioned above, the worldwide lockdown due to the Coronavirus has made the employees work from home. And monitoring remote employees gets hard, you cannot track their productivity level accurately.

You can also use project management software, but they do not track the activities timewise. Tracking work timely shows the productivity of employees, which helps the leaders to get a detailed report of them. It also helps employers to improve the productivity of their employees.

Another reason is to precisely calculate the payroll of employees with the help of tracking software. These are a few good reasons for which an organization would adopt such tools.

Also Read –
How To Ensure Data Security As Covid-19 Makes Work From Home Mandatory
How To Keep Employees Productive During Work From Home (Coronavirus Outbreak)
How To Boost Productivity Through Employee Computer Monitoring Software?

4. IS TRACKING SOFTWARE BAD?

Using an employee hours tracker is absolutely legal, and employers can use them as extensively as they want.

Employees could find some functionality like keystroke and live monitoring a little bit too extreme, but if the process is entirely ethical, there shouldn’t be any problem. This software also prevents data breaches and helps maintain the productivity of employees.

As long as you use the tool in a proper and ethical manner, there is no need to be afraid of it. It is there for the benefit of both employees and employers. The bad factors arise if the software is appointed in an unethical way, and it harms the morality of employees working in your company.

5. IS IT SAFE?

Software that fails to keep the company’s data safe is not useful in any way. So you can say that such tools are 100% secure and you can use it for as long as you want.

Every major monitoring software such as EmpMonitor, stores the data gathered while monitoring on to the cloud; nothing is stored locally in the system. The cloud storage is mostly secured from access to third parties or from any other threat.

So, yes, these software are perfectly safe, and you can use them in your organization.

6. HOW MUCH DOES IT COST?

The price of the software depends upon which one you choose as there are many tools available, so their prices will differ.

Generally, the price of a tracking software ranges from $5 to $20 for one user/month, depending upon the package you buy. But this may change if you purchase a different product and for a huge number of users. For example, the EmpMonitor pricing option starts from $3/user/month and goes up all the way up to $55/user/year. It also has a free trial period, which lasts for 15 days, and it allows five users.

Testing software before use is always beneficial, as there is a slight chance that you may not like the software, or its functionality may not be useful for you. Therefore, it is best if you try out the software before making the purchase.

7. WHICH IS THE BEST EMPLOYEE HOURS TRACKING SOFTWARE?

This question is a very tough one, as there are lots of software available on the market, and each individual has different needs. For instance, suppose a person only wants to do project management, so he will choose software which mainly focuses on task management. Whereas a person whose main objective is to track the productivity of his/her employees will choose different software.

The definition of the best software will be different for both of the people mentioned above. Thus it is hard to answer this question, but hold your horses, I said hard, not impossible. There are certain software which can be termed as an all-rounder in this field, we have covered a few here as we can’t do all in this list.

EmpMonitor is the most affordable and reliable time & productivity tracking software. It has loads of features which will help you cover, not just one, but several aspects of your employees’ activity. The most important one is productivity tracking as with the help of it, you can easily keep track of your employees’ productivity level, and also improve it. Other features included are screen capture, stealth monitoring, top apps & websites used, IP whitelisting, keystroke logging, user logs, and cloud storage. This software is perfect for managing large organizations efficiently.

Another one we have is Time Doctor. It is a great time tracking and project management software. It includes features like screenshots, chat monitoring, client and project tracking, apps and website usage, third party integrations, off-track reminders, and break tracking. It is more popular among the people who favour payroll tracking more rather than productivity.

The best way to find the right software for your organization is to figure out why you need a tracking software. Once you have cleared that, it’ll be easy for you to decide.

8. DOES IT ACTUALLY WORK?

If you have followed the points mentioned above, it is highly unlikely that the tracking software you chose will not work. But if that highly unlikely scenario arises, you should check if you are using the correct features of the software.

You should focus more on your goals and try to achieve the goals which you set out to as you implemented the software. Also, you should study the data provided by your tool and improve the productivity of your employees accordingly.

So, to answer your question. Yes, the tracking software actually works, if you utilize its features properly.

9. WHAT TYPES OF TIME TRACKING SOFTWARE IS AVAILABLE?

There are many times of time tracking software available on the internet, but not all of them are the same. All of them are a tad bit different from each other, and we have made an effort to distinguish them based on their work.

First are the ones which perform billing and invoicing apps. They are used in the organization where a large number of client work is involved. In such scenarios, there is a constant need to track the employee’s work and see the progress of the project and bill the client accordingly.

The next ones are, project tracking software, they are more focused on tracking the start, and completion of projects. Such applications track the project assigned to an employee timewise and help to maintain the workflow properly.

And lastly, we have productivity tracking software such as EmpMonitor. They are more geared towards tracking the overall productivity of an employee. These software tracks the mouse and keyboard activity to track if the employees are working punctually. Some go as far as to take the screenshot of the employees’ system at a regular interval to ensure 100% productivity.

Also Read –
05 Best Time Tracking And Productivity Monitoring Software In 2020
How To Protect Your Data From Insider Threats?

CONCLUSION

That ends all the questions. And I’m sure you are now familiar with the outlook of the employee hours tracker. Remember, always list out the reasons for implementing such software and then choose one.

If I have missed anything or you have some important questions in mind, pls mention them down in the comment section. We will be sure to update them here.