Productivity calculation to evaluate and boost your team's performance

Find out who your hardest workers are, how much time is spent on productive work every day, and what the biggest distractions are.

How does DeskTime calculate productivity?

A screenshot of the DeskTime productivity calculation feature
Set productivity status

Each website and app can be marked as productive, unproductive, or neutral.

A screenshot of how DeskTime calculates productivity
Productivity and effectiveness calculated

See the percentage of how much of your team members' time is spent on productive apps.

A screenshot of the DeskTime employee productivity calculation feature
Customize team settings

The same app or website can have different productivity statuses for different teams.

Gain valuable insights into your team's performance

Employee productivity calculation can help you learn more about your team members and how they work.

An image of two women sitting at a desk and looking at a computer.

Spot your best performers

Find out your most efficient employees and compare performances among teams and team members.

Boost productivity even further

Once you know the current productivity levels in your team, you can set new benchmarks for team members to hit.

Maintain focus

Distractions come easy, but knowing they affect productivity stats, your team will stay focused on the tasks at hand.

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Battle these issues with productivity calculation

Too much slacking

Productivity stats can show you who's not pulling their weight on the team.

Scattered attention

Everyone's less prone to distractions – no one wants the unproductive orange in their stats.

Burned out employees

No one can stay 100% productive all day long – spot the signs of burnout before it happens.

Hear from our users how DeskTime raised their productivity

"My Entire Business Grows on Desktime!"

I started using Desktime even before the pandemic, but I implemented it very seriously after the lockdown. Since then, it is one of the tools, I rely on for productivity and effectiveness for my entire team of 50. I recommend Desktime hands down to anyone who is in remote/hybrid work culture.

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Santhosh G.

Santhosh G.

CEO, Small-Business

"The control of your team in your hands!"

With this tool, you can do a personalized follow-up of your work team, according to their performance, to reorganize their workload and days off and reassign functions, among other things.

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Michael S.

Michael S.

Analista TĂ©cnico Seguridad Exterior, Mid-Market

"Really helps with time and task management"

I'm able to accurately track where time is being spent effectively and which applications are unproductive. Having a view of this helps with managing projects and time more effeciently. Really good tool for increasing productivity especially with a team of remote workers.

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Oliver C.

Oliver C.

Business Owner, Small-Business

"The best time tracker out there"

I love how easy it is to log time. It logs everything you do on your computer, so if you forgot to track time for a certain project you can figure out later exactly when you started based on your activity, and add it manually. It has a superb dashboard and top-notch customer service.

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Elena P.

Elena P.

Senior Marketing Specialist, Small-Business

"Employee productivity tracking made easy."

Desktime provided us with a one-stop solution for time tracking including log-in & log-off timing. We could easily monitor an individual's productivity. It gave us good insight into who is "Working late" instead of "Staying Late".

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Suraj J.

Suraj J.

Admin, Small-Business

"Improved our team productivity"

Our productivity has greatly risen. Within the team, there was a competitive atmosphere, and we were focused on achieving excellent results. According to our own business, we have discovered unproductive apps. We are extremely pleased with the outcome.

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Verified User in Program Development

Verified User in Program Development

Small-Business

"Great to know effectivity, and productivity without being invasive"

I like how user-friendly it is, I can get very insightful reports about my team's performance just with a couple of clicks. I've been able to determine downtime, training needs, and any gaps that can help me optimize my team's performance.

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Kenny H.

Kenny H.

Mid-Market

"Extensive time tracking capabilities"

We used to use a lot of time tracking tools that came integrated with task managers, but none of those compare to what DeskTime offers. The automatic time tracking with the idle time tracking function is a revolutionary feature that allows us to measure the productivity levels of our employees.

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David A.

David A.

CEO, Mid-Market

"Very helpful tool, a game changer for remote work!"

Desktime is an amazing tool that every company need for working remotely. The features like daily and monthly productivity as well as the reporting, create an accurate and complete profile of every employee.

Read more
Aspa P.

Aspa P.

CMO, Small-Business

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Download the app

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Start tracking time

And invite your teammates to join
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Based on 300 customer reviews
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Frequently asked questions about productivity calculation

Employee productivity calculation is a valuable performance evaluation tool that can help employers see who their top performers are and who might not be pulling their weight. It can also help employers spot those who are risking burnout (being 100% productive all the time is impossible) or notice other potential problem situations and prevent them before they escalate. Productivity calculations can also be used to optimize workflows and improve processes.
The easiest way to calculate employee productivity is to use a time tracking tool such as DeskTime to log their activities and count how much time is spent on specific apps and websites. DeskTime lets you assign a productivity status (productive, unproductive, or neutral) to each app and URL your employees visit. Then the time spent on productive apps/URLs is expressed as a percentage against the total time they spent working that day.
DeskTime calculates employee productivity and effectiveness by assigning a productivity status to each app and URL your team uses throughout the day (the statuses can be changed, and the default is neutral). Then as the DeskTime app tracks the websites and apps everyone uses and visits, time spent on each becomes productive, unproductive, or neutral. Productivity then becomes the time spent on productive apps/URLs divided against the total time spent on the computer and expressed as a percentage. On the other hand, effectiveness is productive time divided by the minimum number of hours employees should work and expressed as a percentage; this means that the effectiveness percentage starts low when the shift begins and gradually increases as employees accumulate the necessary number of hours for the day.
You can measure team productivity by measuring each employee's productivity and then calculating the team's average based on those numbers. If you use DeskTime, the average team productivity is calculated automatically and accessible to account administrators and owners in the Dashboard section. There, you can see an overview of the entire company's day (including absences, employees who are late, the most productive and unproductive employees, etc.). It is also possible to filter the view by teams to take a deeper dive into the stats of each department.
Productivity can be affected by external factors, like the environment you work in, and internal ones – how you feel at a given moment. Multitasking, interrupted workflow, loud environment, and various other factors that can throw you out of rhythm have decreased productivity; once you're distracted, regaining focus can take quite a while. Meanwhile, your mood during the day can also impact your productivity – if you're stressed about a big presentation you have to give that day, you'll probably find it hard to focus on other tasks. Plus, we're all human, and events in our lives outside of work impact our mood and, thus, productivity at the workplace.
DeskTime measures and calculates productivity in several ways, but the starting point for each metric is the productivity status given to apps and URLs your employees use throughout the day. Productivity is then expressed as a percentage of the time spent on productive websites/apps divided by the total time spent working that day. In the dashboard, you can also see the unproductivity percentage of your team members. Meanwhile, effectiveness is another metric you can look at – the amount of productive time of the day divided by the set minimum hours employees should hit. This percentage starts at 0% at the beginning of the day and rises as employees accumulate more productive time while working.
There isn't a single productivity percentage that's generally considered optimal since its calculation depends on each team's and account's settings. That's why when you start using DeskTime, you should figure out your team's benchmark, depending on which sites count as productive and which do not. Don't forget that it's also a good idea to customize the productivity statuses between teams – social media sites, for example, will be unproductive for most departments, but the marketing team might need to spend time on them for work-related purposes. So to make sure their productivity statistics are not unfairly skewed, customize the settings between teams.
If your team primarily works on their computers, then one of the most efficient ways to measure productivity is to use a time tracking app like DeskTime. It logs the websites and apps your team members use throughout the day, and you can assign productivity statuses for each of them. How is productivity calculated – the DeskTime app looks at how much of the time was spent using work-related (productive) apps and websites and divides it by the total amount of time spent at work that day. The productivity calculation feature is a quick way to spot your hardest workers and who might be prone to slacking.