Free Employee Monitoring Software

If your company doesn’t have enough money to invest in a paid version monitoring software, then you will have to find free employee monitoring software. In this article, you are going to find out everything about free software solutions. Here are some tips on how to choose the best business software.

Employee monitoring software solutions are there to help employers and managers track their employee’s work. It can be done in the workplace or when employees work from home.

What can you track with the employee monitoring software? The features that these software solutions offer are different and versatile, but the most common ones are different types of tracking:

Activities on a computer – any activity on the computer, whether it is a desktop computer or laptop. It can track what apps were active and for how long.
Screenshots – The software occasionally takes screenshots of the employee’s monitor. When you get insight into screenshots, you can see how much time does a certain task take or did an employee struggle with a certain part of the task.
Internet monitoring – It tracks time spent on the internet and how much time an employee spends on a certain website.
Keystrokes – Every key that employees press is recorded. Or the software tracks the number of times the keys were pressed.
E-mail monitoring – This type of monitoring is more common in offices in which every employee has their own computer. The company often monitors e-mails to prevent time-wasting or some illegal activities.
Telephone tracking – similar to e-mail tracking, the telephone calls are recorded, usually in the field of customer service.
GPS tracking – is usually used when the employee needs to use the company’s property in order to do their job.

Advantages and disadvantages of monitoring employees

Monitoring employees certainly have advantages, but it has some disadvantages, as well.

Advantages of employee monitoring

Keeping track of errors – In order to get the job done right, you need to be on top of things. So, you have to monitor not only what is done correctly, but also you need to track errors. Identifying errors can help the get the job done better next time.
Safety – is extremely important if you have goals to hit, which you probably do. Also, you need to make sure that the employee is not doing anything harmful or illegal.
It protects employees – If the employee is monitored, they have proof that they worked the hours and that they earned their paycheck. Also, if somebody accuses them of slacking, they can prove that they are doing their job properly.

Disadvantages of employee monitoring

Employee satisfaction and privacy – Some people are very sensitive to this issue because they don’t like to be monitored as much. They believe it is unnecessary and it is invading their privacy. This can create a lot of stress for these employees and also, affect their creativity.
Creative jobs are particularly sensitive to this type of monitoring. The reason for it is that everybody has a different creative process. Also, some jobs are pretty much impossible to monitor this way. So, the manager should evaluate if the job is suitable to be done from home and to be monitored this way. The employee’s personality should be also taken into consideration.
It is time-consuming – Although employee monitoring has advantages, it will take a lot of your time. There is a lot of data to process and if you have more than one employee to monitor, just imagine how much time that takes.