You’ve noticed that on certain days in certain months, your team’s productivity drops, which in turn negatively impacts the tasks they perform. This is where employee monitoring software comes in. You can sit down and analyze your team’s behavior to find out what’s affecting their efficiency – what apps they’re using (maybe it’s the wrong software), when their productivity hits rock bottom (maybe they’re tired from a workload).
ActivTrak – Employee Activity Monitoring Software – Can It Help Your Business?
ActivTrak is a software that is suitable for individuals and teams. No matter what industry you work in, as long as you need data to improve your results and ensure that the right processes are happening in your organization, this solution will suit your needs. But it’s important to remember that it’s not just about data. It’s about understanding how work is done, what your and your team’s behaviors are, and what the processes look like. The software allows you to see the big picture of what’s happening in the organization, monitor employee performance, and track and measure productivity.
How does it work?
A small piece of software called an Agent is installed on a computer. The ActivTrak Agent runs completely in the background. Once installed on the employee’s computer, it starts collecting data on the computer user’s activity and presents it to you in the dashboard, with all sorts of different categories to measure the employee’s efficiency. You can see information for different users and different time periods (days, weeks, months, years), all in one place. The software really shows everything that happens on the computer during work. If you want to see more details, you can access the left sidebar with more options. There are 10 icons on the left, we’ll talk about the main ones.
Dashboard for monitoring employees in one place
This is the main view you’ll see after logging into your account. It’s a quick way to glance at all the most important data. But now, to view more detailed reports, you can select other sections in the sidebar.
Real-time activity for employee monitoring
This section simply shows all the activities that are happening in real time. You can select a user and see what they are doing right now, as well as look at everything they have done before. It is an activity log with information like the type of activity (productive or non-productive), screenshots, data, time, computer, user, duration of activity, application, and title/description. Pretty detailed information about employee activity, right?
Reports to analyze your employees’ activity and team behavior
Here you can see all the activity data for days, weeks, months, years or a custom time, and users. Similar to the Real-time section, it shows the type of activity (productive or non-productive), screenshots, data, time, computer, user, activity duration, application, website. In addition, you can export reports to a CSV file or save them to Google Drive. This is especially useful if you need to share this data with stakeholders, clients, team members or people who do not have access to the software. But there is another important feature – alerts. You can create an alert that will be triggered when new entries in the activity log match the conditions you have defined in the alert settings. If you suspect someone in your organization is working against the law and you know that they are a threat to your business, this is a great way to catch them red-handed! There is also a risk report, an alert log and everything you need for effective employee monitoring.
Screenshots for more demanding users
Screenshots in ActivTrak are essentially reports in a visual format. They include all the information about your or your employees’ activities. This allows you to see exactly what you did, when, and for how long. This is useful in improving productivity. Viewing too many Facebook screenshots during your work time will surely motivate you to work better. You can also set screenshot alerts as needed.
Blocking to maintain security and productivity
‘Blocking’ is simple, it allows you to block certain websites so that you or your team members cannot access them.
Notification scheduling alerts
In this section, you can set up alerts. If you add a site to an alert, ActivTrak will notify you of the activity, so you can monitor a team member who visits the site. You can also get notified every time someone inserts a USB (but you need to adjust the settings to get this type of alert).
Customizable settings
As with any other app, ActivTrak allows you to customize your preferences regarding report details. There are a number of things you can do:
- Choosing sites that are considered unproductive (like Facebook)
- Assign categories
- Defining activities as productive or unproductive
- Group Management – Adding Groups and New Members
- Using nicknames for team members for easy reporting
- Choosing who not to track activities
- Creating and adjusting schedules – hours during which team activities will be monitored
- Select time zone
Is ActivTrak worth implementing in your business or in your daily work?
I personally think ActivTrak is a great piece of software. After just an hour of using the app, I got detailed data on my activity. It gives me a clear picture of everything I do.
I can use it to analyze almost anything that happens during my work and find the source of problems at work. I can even get to details like what the weather was like on my least productive day and realize that I had a major headache that day due to changes in atmospheric pressure, and I just wasn’t able to work efficiently! (Yes, that’s what you can find out!).
Used wisely, the software can help improve the work of not only entire organizations but also individuals. Even when used in conjunction with other tools, you can become a productivity hero.
It’s also worth noting that ActivTrak keeps all data secure and ensures protection against cybercrime that your business may be exposed to, if you work with sensitive or highly confidential data.
Advantages:
Easy to use, intuitive
Helpful in optimizing business research
Helps understand how work is done – team behavior analytics
Disadvantages:
ActivTrak may not be suitable for organizations without a clearly defined privacy policy, as it may not fit their business model.
