Key takeaways
- Employee activity monitoring software falls into three groups: content capture, activity analytics and presence tracking.
- A workforce presence platform records whether people are working, not what is on their screens.
- TIMO360 reports active, idle, break and meeting time, and never records keystroke content or screenshots.
Employee activity monitoring software records signs of work so managers can see attendance, working time and workload without chasing everyone for updates. The label covers very different products, though, and the differences decide whether your team trusts the tool.
Three kinds of tool
Content capture: screenshots, screen recordings, keystroke logs or webcam snapshots. They see the most and cost the most in trust.
Activity analytics: application and website usage, sometimes with optional screenshots. They show where time goes.
Presence tracking: whether someone is at work and active or idle. A workforce presence platform works at this level.
Where TIMO360 sits
TIMO360 is at the presence end. After an employee punches in, the desktop agent reports keyboard and mouse presence as a simple active or idle signal. It also notes the foreground application, the window title as text and the browser domain. It never records keystroke content, screenshots, audio, webcam or full page URLs.
How employee presence detection works
Employee presence detection software only needs a yes or no: is input happening right now? The platform groups those signals into sessions and builds daily, weekly and monthly reports. Breaks pause tracking, and meetings count as active time even when nobody is typing, so the record matches the real working day.
Questions to ask any vendor
What exactly do you collect, and what do you never collect?
Can employees see their own data?
Who can see what, and how long is it kept?
Does it pause during breaks and count meetings as work?
Read more in employee monitoring without surveillance, the guide to active versus idle time and the buyer's checklist.