Employee monitoring and time tracking tools are often mistaken for one another due to their numerous similarities. However it is important to note there are differences between them, and understanding that is key to determining which one you actually need.
If you’re trying to figure out whether you need an employee monitoring or time tracking tool – the best way is to consider the reasons why you need one in the first place.
To Check What Your Employees Are Up To
Want to keep an eye on your employees and check what they’re actually doing while at work? Technically both employee monitoring and time tracking can accomplish this – albeit in slightly different ways.
Time tracking tools with task-based or project management features will typically let you assign tasks to employees and track how much time they take to complete it. On the other hand employee monitoring tools will allow you to gather more data regarding your employees’ activities.
If you use Controlio, that data will include app usage, browsing history, emails, files, IM communication, keystrokes, and a whole lot more. It can even be used to capture screenshots or short recording of your employees’ screens so you can literally ‘see’ what they’re doing.
To Improve Security and Protect From Threats
Security is a growing concern for many organizations – both from external and internal threats. Unfortunately most time tracking tools can do very little to help bolster security, but the same is not true of employee monitoring.
Most employee monitoring tools have features that can help improve security by giving you the means to monitor for and identify suspicious activity. In the case of Controlio that includes setting up behavior rules and alerts that can block unwanted activity or notify you if anything happens.
The features in Controlio can also track file transfers and alterations that are made to files, as well as capture keystrokes and screenshots if there is any suspicious behavior. All in all that should prevent or at least discourage many threats.
To Track Progress and Bill Clients Accurately
For the most part if you want to track task progress, keep timesheets, and bill clients more accurately – what you’re looking for is a time tracker that is task-based or has project management features. However, some employee monitoring tools may have that too in some form or other.
Within Controlio you’ll be able to designate employees into groups based on the teams they’re in or the projects they’re working on. By doing so you can then track the time they spend actively working, and use that to determine how long they’re working on a particular task or project.
Of course it would be far easier to track all that with specialized features that break down projects into tasks and then let you assign tasks to employees and track the time spent working on them. That is what task-based time tracking or project management features can do, and it could make a world of difference.
Final Words
As you can see, once you decide on the reasons why you need either an employee monitoring or time tracking tool – it should be easy to determine which one would be the best fit.
Generally speaking employee monitoring will let you track employee activities’ with more depth and monitor exactly what they’re up to. In contrast, time tracking will focus more on how your employees are spending their time and the tasks they’re doing.
If you’re still not sure, you may want to try out some of the various employee monitoring and time tracking tools out there to check out what they can do firsthand.
