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Employee time tracking software has become increasingly common in today's workplace, especially with the rise of remote work. While these tools can provide legitimate benefits for employers, they also raise potential concerns around employee privacy and morale. In this article, we will go through some of the major concerns employees have, our proposed solution and how it performs against the most popular time trackers - namely Time Doctor and Hubstaff.
What are employees most concerns about when faced with time tracking software?
From customers surveys we've done in recent months, the most common concerns boils down to the following
- Constant monitoring can feel like an invasion of privacy
- Potential for excessive micromanagement and lack of autonomy
- Technical limitations may fail to capture full work contributions
The goal should be nurturing a high-trust culture of accountability while still respecting reasonable privacy expectations. By working collaboratively with employees, employers can optimize time tracking practices in a way that is fair and motivational rather than draconian.
While time tracking tools can provide valuable data insights, an excessive fixation on monitoring individual activity runs the risk of creating an environment of micromanagement and mistrust. A healthier approach for many organizations would be to shift toward evaluating employees primarily based on their overall outputs, productivity and achievement of goals. This focuses more on the quality and value of completed work rather than strictly policing workflow minutiae. Empowering employees with greater autonomy and judging them on end results helps build accountability while also promoting a culture of mutual trust. An overemphasis on granular time metrics can be demoralizing and imply a lack of confidence in employees' ability to manage their own time effectively. Leading employers are recognizing the importance of balancing software insights with developing high-trust relationships that inspire employees to take ownership over delivering meaningful outcomes.
The key point is that while data from time tracking can provide useful context, an overdependence on monitoring activity rather than evaluating output and goal achievement can inadvertently undermine workplace motivation and erode a positive, trust-based culture. Leading with trust and accountability focused on results creates a healthier dynamic.
What can employees do against time tracking software?
LazyWork —an all-in-one solution designed to enhance productivity. With support for keypress, mouse movement, and seamless browser/application switching, our tool ensures accurate activity simulation for a seamless user experience. Take advantage of our 7-day free trial and rely on our round-the-clock customer support for a hassle-free journey towards enhanced productivity! LazyWork is supported on Windows 10, 11 and Mac OS. Although this article focuses on the biggest time trackers, we also work for many of the other popular time trackers such as Team Logger, Upwork Tracker, Traqq and Screenshot Monitor.
To showcase our product against major time tracking software such as Time Doctor and Hubstaff, let's take a look at some samples of how LazyWork performed over a 3-4 hour period of automated activity. First of all, here's the LazyWork settings we worked with.
We've enabled our new feature "Variable Activity Level", which will adjust your settings automatically while running to avoid consistent movement, further creating an illusion of human-like movement by keeping each recorded period more unpredictable.
How did LazyWork do against Time Doctor?
Lets take a look at this 8 hour session with 10 minute recorded periods
As one can see from our screenshots above, LazyWork has immaculate results working against Time Doctor. It also did not detect LazyWork at all in the websites and app list even though it was running for over 3 hours! Huge win for our customers that use LazyWork to increase their activity levels!
How did LazyWork do against Hubstaff?
For a similar work session as the Time Doctor example above, here are the results on Hubstaff.
Similar results to Time Doctor, LazyWork performed very well against Hubstaff as well, showing no suspicious activity and completely undetectable by it.
Should I use LazyWork?
LazyWork will function very well for most use cases where time trackers are used. Unfortunately, there are a few scenarios where we do not recommend using LazyWork.
- Highly secured/locked down company computer
- Live remote monitoring of active desktop
- Screen recordings (not screenshots!)
For a secured company laptop, our software is unable to be installed without being detected as these systems will trigger alerts on any unauthorized installations. Although we do have a standalone version on Windows, we recommend not risking your job/career on saving some time here.
For live monitoring/screen recordings, where employers will manually review video recordings of your actions or physically be present and watching you work, our automation will not trick them. Unfortunately, if someone is watching you work - you simply have no way of tricking them other than recording 8 hour long macros!
If your use case does not fall into any of the 3 edge cases mentioned above - sign up for a 7-day free trial of LazyWork now and get your time back! We've also partnered with Bank PDF Converter to provide free credits to their tool. Learn how they built it in their recent article!
Can we see LazyWork in action?
Certainly - we've created multiple videos of the tool in action and it's result live. See the following videos for Time Doctor on both PC and Mac and Hubstaff on Mac.