Desk Time – Improve Your Company’s Productivity

Productive companies get more done in less time, and in turn they have the tendency to bring in more revenue and operate more efficiently. Desk Time is a tool that businesses can use to make sure all their employees are on track at all times. The real-time time tracking application analyzes employee productivity by tracking the applications that each staffer is using and categorizing those applications as “productive,” “distracting,” or “neutral.”

Sign up for Desk Time as a company, and then make sure all of your employees are on board. Once all your employees are signed up and logged on, Desk Time can begin tracking what types of applications they are using. It then analyzes those application and categorizes them based on the likelihood that an employee is doing something productive with his or her time. By taking a glance at the dashboard screen, you can see which applications your employees are currently using, how long they’ve been at work, and how much of their time so far has been spent being productive. The top of each dashboard page shows how many employees are at their desks, how many of those people are actually working, how many are slacking, how many are absent, and how many were late. Group your employees by department to see which departments are most productive. You can also limit Desk Time’s productivity tracking to specific locations to prevent employees from having their activity tracked when they use company laptops at home.

Desk Time collects user behavior data and web site visits, but it does not track keystrokes, form input, or other sensitive information. To keep your own productivity information a secret, Desk Time has created a “Private Mode” that people can enter when they want the application to stop tracking their online behavior. The data that Desk Time collects can be incredibly useful to businesses looking for smarter ways to increase productivity and employee output.

Practical Uses:

• Get more work out of your office staff
• Find out how much time your assistant spends watching YouTube videos
• See which employees are actually working on their Power Point presentations
• Keep track of which employees arrive late each day

Insider Tips:

• Only account owners and admins can view employee-tracking data
• Users must install a Firefox extension for Desk Time to work properly
• Admins can set up Desk Time to only track a connected laptop when it’s being used in the office
• Desk Time offers a mobile version for iPhones and Androids

What we liked:

• Employees always know when Desk Time is running on their computers
• People can use Desk Time to evaluate their own productivity when working on specific projects
• Employees can be grouped by department
• Managers can see how many employees are absent or slacking at any time

What we didn’t like:

• Desk Time can’t log the time people spend doing work offline

Alternatives:

• ClickTime – http://www.clicktime.com
• Replicon – http://www.replicon.com
• RescueTime – https://www.rescuetime.com

Company Info:

• Launched: January 2011
• Privately Held
• Headquarters: Marupe, Latvia
• Founded by: Agris Tamanis and Lauris Liberts
• Web site: https://desktime.com

Costs:

• Lite accounts are $4.50 per month, per employee
• Pro accounts are $9 per month, per employee