Modern Cloud-Based Solutions for Employee Monitoring 2021
No doubt that it’s difficult to control and manage office employees without some extra tools that help businessmen ensure that the team members are productive in the workplace. This is where employee monitoring solutions come into play. Modern video surveillance systems, phone call recorders, time trackers, employee monitoring software, and HR software let many companies stay productive and even increase their profit. In this article, I’ll share my experience of using some tracking software and describe some monitoring solutions that you may find helpful and use in your company.
The Benefits of Employee Monitoring
Not all people agree that team members must be tracked by employers in the workplace. That’s why before discussing some helpful tools for this purpose, let’s take a look at the benefits of managing your team with the help of monitoring solutions. Employee monitoring tools let you:
- detect late-comers and slackers in the team;
- prevent company data leakage;
- check a team’s productivity;
- manage project timelines and resources;
- ensure that the customer support provides the service you expect;
- investigate a team’s unlawful actions;
- detect hacking attempts.
Overall, employee monitoring improves a team’s productivity, gives you a vivid picture of business processes in your company, and protects your company from data leakage, which results in a profit increase of your business and helps to avoid some unexpected losses.
Why Select a Cloud-Based Solution?
Though there are many ways to control your team like video-based surveillance or phone conversation recording, now most companies prefer to use cloud-based monitoring solutions. The advantages of such solutions include easy deployment, remote access to the recorded data (you can access the data from any device connected to the Net), compatibility with mobile devices, individual configuration, remote updates and data storage, and absence of additional hardware. Without further ado, let’s take a look at modern employee monitoring tools and find out why they are helpful.
How to Control All User Activities With Cloud-Based Employee Monitoring Software?
Cloud-based employee monitoring software allows you to control the team’s productivity and to protect your company from data leakage as well due to its powerful monitoring features. Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of employee monitoring software at the example of the CleverControl monitoring tool. This software allows remote tracking of employees’ activities via a secure web account.
Speaking of the features, the software lets you check what your team members are up to by recording keystrokes, capturing screenshots, and controlling removable drives activities. The above-mentioned functions are very helpful when you suspect somebody from the team of planning unlawful actions or if you want to prevent data loss and leakage. Besides, the software can monitor live surroundings via computer mic and webcam, which helps you protect not only the corporate data, but also the company’s devices, office items, and other stuff.
Other functions include broadcasting all computer screens in live mode, recording social activities on messengers, tracking emails, chats, as well as recording productive and unproductive time. This bunch of features makes it possible to record and analyze the team’s efficiency as you’ll detect slackers and find hard-workers in your team.
Further, cloud-based employee monitoring software can track activities on the Net (like visited websites or search queries), monitor used applications, check the time of clocking in and out (it shows you when the user turns on & off the computer). Such features give an employer or an HR-manager a vivid picture of what employees are doing in the workplace. Further, you’ll find some other pros and some cons of such software.
Pros of employee monitoring software:
- allows remote monitoring;
- helps to solve 2 issues at once: improves the team’s productivity & protects the company from data leakage and other unlawful actions;
- big variety of software available on the market today;
- compatibility;
- many monitoring features;
- anytime access to the data.
Cons of employee monitoring software
- very few free solutions;
- as a rule, free software has fewer features or restricts a number of monitored devices;
- subscription-based purchase (such software usually doesn’t offer lifetime access).
How to Control Productivity with Time Tracking Apps?
Like employee monitoring software, time trackers are also used to control team members remotely, though these two types of monitoring software have different features and purposes. While the main purpose of employee monitoring is reporting you about all user activities, time trackers are designed to monitor only time-related activities (for example, how much time does it take a colleague to complete a task or project, how much time he/she spends efficiently and vice versa, etc). Let’s take a look at Clockify, one of the popular modern time-trackers, and analyze its features.
The time-tracker is installed on each office device and lets your team monitor business hours and manage their time spent in the office. For this purpose, the software offers an in-built timer as well as timesheets. The team can also mark their hours as billable and categorize time by project. Further, the team manager can easily see each employee’s current activities, set hourly rates, and check who worked on what. As a result, an employer has a vivid picture of what the staff members are doing in the workplace.
So why are time-trackers helpful and who is suggested to use such an app during a business week? The app is pretty handy for team members whose salary depends on personal productivity like sales managers, IT specialists, designers, SEO specialists, and more (the projects you complete, the more you earn). The app is specifically designed for seeing where your own time goes, so it helps employees stay focused on daily tasks. The tool will be also helpful for freelancers as it lets you mark time records as billable, apply your hourly or daily rates, and send the data to clients for review. Company owners, HR-managers, and businessmen will find time tracking software helpful due to attendance monitoring and time control features.
Pros of time-tracking apps:
- helps both the employer and team members;
- controls attendance and efficient time;
- helps team members stay focused on projects;
- gives an employee a vivid picture of the business process;
- is available on any kind of devices;
- offers a free trial and is cheaper than employee monitoring solutions.
Cons of time-tracking apps:
- offers fewer features than employee monitoring solutions do;
- the software is managed by an employee so the recorded time reports may not be trustworthy.
How To Manage Your Team Members, Their Projects & Deadlines With HR Management Software?
Another way to monitor employees and to control the business process is to use a special HR management software like Bitrix24. Such software offers many features that are helpful for any department in the company. In fact, this is a multifunctional cloud-based solution to run your business. To begin with, HR management software helps employers check how much time the team members spend on daily tasks. It also lets company owners see the whole business process and find out who is working on what at the moment as well as monitor future projects and tasks of each team member.
Further, such apps usually offer employee collaboration tools like a file-sharing option, video conferencing solution, personal and group chats, making it easier for the staff to work efficiently from afar. Besides, on an HR management platform, any member can create his/her profile with essential data like contact information (mobile number, email address, etc.), full name, skills, interests, and department information.
Some HR software even contains platforms working like social networks, where colleagues can share the latest news and updates, chat, share their opinion about somebody’s announcements by “liking” content, upload their photos to a gallery, and many more. Workflows like business trips, purchases, expenses, leave requests are also included in HR software features.
Pros of HR Management Software:
- helps you manage projects remotely;
- controls team’s time;
- offers team collaboration tools;
- lets employees create own profiles with contact data;
- helps you control workflows;
- offers free solutions for small businesses.
Cons of HR Management Software:
- isn’t cheap for big companies;
- some HR Management solutions restrict the number of employees who can use the platform;
- employees’ reports may not correspond to reality ’cause team members create them themselves.
To Sum Up
Overall, there are many cloud-based solutions for employee monitoring and management available on the market today. All cloud-based solutions are easy to use and deploy and offer a variety of helpful features. The most widely-used solutions for tracking your team and workflow are employee monitoring software, time-trackers, and HR management software.
Frankly speaking, employee monitoring software will meet your needs if you want to control all employees’ activities, their performance, and prevent data leakage and similar unlawful actions. If you simply need to check how much time a team member spends on this or that project and to help him/her manage working hours better, a time-tracker will be a perfect solution.
Speaking of HR management software, it’s more complex than a time tracking app and offers more features, so it will fit you in case you’re looking for a solution offering features like performance tracking, time control, workflow management, video conferencing, chat, as well as reports and announcements. So I recommend you analyze your team’s and your own monitoring needs thoroughly and select the solution that suits your company.
