Introducing ActivTrak to Your Organization

New ActivTrak customers often have questions about how to introduce ActivTrak to their employees. While the process will look different for every organization, we recommend the following guidelines to ensure a smooth rollout.

Contents

Phase 1: Strategic Planning

Phase 2: Communication Strategy

Phase 3: Manager Enablement

Phase 4: Employee Rollout

Ongoing Management and Optimization

Measuring Implementation Success

Best Practices

Change management and rollout support

Phase 1: Strategic Planning

Week 1: Set a foundation 

Begin by aligning your ActivTrak implementation with broader organizational objectives. Schedule a leadership team meeting to discuss how ActivTrak supports key business initiatives such as workplace flexibility, continuous improvement, or becoming an employer of choice. During this phase, focus on developing a clear narrative that connects ActivTrak to your organization's values and goals. You can also document your productivity monitoring procedures in your employee handbook to set the stage for trust and transparency.

Define specific metrics that align with your organizational goals

Start with foundational productivity metrics such as productive time utilization (typically targeting 65-75% of total working hours) and focus time (recommended 2-4 hours daily for most knowledge workers). Track overall working hours to identify potential burnout risk (over 8 hours consistently) or underutilization (under 5 hours regularly).

For teams with specific schedules, such as contact centers or help desks, consider schedule adherence metrics. While individual working patterns may vary, most organizations aim for core collaboration hours where teams maintain 70-80% overlap in working time to facilitate effective communication.

Advanced metrics might include technology utilization (identifying unused software licenses), collaboration patterns (targeting 20-30% of time in meetings for most roles), and focus time fragmentation (periods of uninterrupted work). Remember that ideal metrics vary significantly by role — a developer might need 4-6 hours of focus time daily, while a sales representative might spend 50-60% of their time in communication tools.

Document your baseline expectations clearly, acknowledging that these metrics serve as guidelines rather than rigid targets. For example, specify that "while we expect most team members to log 6-7 productive hours daily, we recognize that productive time may be lower on heavy meeting days or during training periods." These baselines will guide your implementation and provide context for future coaching conversations.

Access and Permissions Strategy

Develop a comprehensive access framework that details who will have visibility into ActivTrak insights. Consider creating different access levels for executives, HR business partners, managers, and individual contributors. Document your rationale for each access level and prepare guidelines for how different stakeholders should use the data.

Phase 2: Communication Strategy

Week 2: Building Your Message

Create a communication strategy that emphasizes transparency and employee empowerment. Your initial announcement should come from a senior leader, ideally your CEO or CHRO, and should clearly articulate:

  • The connection between ActivTrak and your broader business initiatives, such as supporting flexible work arrangements or fostering continuous improvement. For example: "As we evolve our hybrid work model, ActivTrak will help us understand how different work arrangements impact team collaboration and individual productivity."
  • Specific benefits for employees, such as better workload balance, improved coaching opportunities, and data-driven conversations about process improvements. Include concrete examples like: "Managers will be better equipped to identify signs of potential burnout and proactively adjust workloads."
  • Clear boundaries around data collection, emphasizing that ActivTrak focuses on work patterns and productivity trends rather than individual surveillance. Explicitly state what isn't monitored — keystrokes, cameras, microphones or screen recordings (by default).

Phase 3: Manager Enablement

Week 3: Preparing Your Leaders

Managers play a crucial role in successful ActivTrak implementation. Begin their preparation by helping them understand how ActivTrak supports their coaching and leadership responsibilities. Schedule focused training sessions to help them prepare to respond to questions from their teams.

In addition, train managers on interpreting productivity data. For example, help them understand that a customer service representative's collaboration time might naturally be higher than a software developer's, or that productive hours may vary between office-based and field teams. Provide specific scenarios they might encounter, such as: "If you notice an employee's focus time has decreased significantly, approach the conversation with curiosity: 'I've noticed you're having shorter focus sessions lately. Are you running into any obstacles we should address?'"

Setup your leaders for success by: 

  • Creating subscriptions: Create email subscriptions for managers in your organization to share regular updates on key metrics. This helps managers and individuals assess progress toward goals, identify blockers, and make necessary adjustments.
  • Enabling the Weekly Digest: Encourage managers to review the Weekly Digest email they’ll receive every Monday morning. This provides a high-level recap of team activity and productivity over the previous week.

Establish clear guidelines for how managers should use ActivTrak insights in their regular interactions with team members. Encourage them to:

  • Frame conversations around enablement rather than oversight. Instead of "I noticed you spent two hours on social media yesterday," guide them toward "Let's discuss any challenges you're facing with staying focused during core work hours."
  • Include ActivTrak insights in regular one-on-ones as part of broader performance and development discussions. Help managers create balanced agendas that incorporate both data-driven insights and employee perspectives.

For more details, view the presentation for introducing ActivTrak to managers

Phase 4: Employee Rollout

Week 4: Implementation and Training

After you’ve laid the foundation and prepared your managers, schedule comprehensive training sessions where employees can learn how to access and interpret their own productivity data. Show them how to use features like the Weekly Digest to track their own progress and identify areas for improvement, and enable Personal Insight so they can self-manage productivity. Provide real-world examples of how they might use these insights, such as identifying their peak productivity hours or recognizing when they need to adjust their work patterns.

In addition, create opportunities for employees to ask questions and provide feedback. Consider hosting office hours where team members can drop in to discuss specific concerns or get help interpreting their data. Document frequently asked questions and share updates regularly to maintain transparency and engagement.

Resources:

Ongoing Management and Optimization

In addition to the guidelines above, plan ahead by preparing:

Regular Reviews and Adjustments

Schedule monthly reviews with key stakeholders to assess the impact of your ActivTrak implementation. Look for patterns in both the data and employee feedback. For example, you might notice that teams with regular data-driven coaching sessions show higher engagement scores or that certain departments are discovering new opportunities for process improvement.

Success Stories and Best Practices

Actively collect and share success stories from across your organization. These might include:

  • A manager who used workload balance insights to redistribute tasks more effectively, resulting in improved team satisfaction and productivity.
  • An employee who discovered their most productive hours were early morning and adjusted their schedule accordingly, leading to better work-life balance and higher quality output.
  • A department that identified unnecessary meetings through collaboration time analysis and created new communication guidelines that increased focus time.

Measuring Implementation Success

Key Performance Indicators

Track both quantitative and qualitative metrics to gauge the success of your ActivTrak deployment:

  • Engagement Metrics: Monitor the percentage of employees actively using their ActivTrak Personal Insights, participation in training sessions, and the quality of feedback during review meetings.
  • Productivity Improvements: Look for trends in focus time, collaboration patterns and workload balance across teams and departments.
  • Management Effectiveness: Assess the quality and frequency of data-driven coaching conversations, employee satisfaction with performance discussions, and managers' ability to use insights effectively.

Regular pulse surveys can help you gather feedback about the impact of ActivTrak on workplace culture and employee experience. Use this feedback to refine your approach and address any concerns proactively.

Remember that successful implementation is an ongoing journey rather than a destination. Continue to evolve your approach based on organizational learning and changing needs while maintaining your commitment to transparency and employee empowerment.

Best practices

When rolling out ActivTrak, keep these four best practices in mind to ensure success:

1. Be transparent

2. Communicate often

3. Encourage ownership

4. Put culture first

Best practice #1: Be transparent 

First and foremost, build trust and get employee buy-in. It’s important to be upfront about your productivity monitoring program, including what data you collect and how you intend to use it. The software is meant to provide insights to improve your business. It should not be used to spy on employees or incite invasive or harassing behaviors. Trust and transparency are essential to building productive teams, and organizations should prioritize and protect employee privacy while using productivity monitoring solutions. You can be transparent by documenting your productivity monitoring procedures in your employee handbook and encouraging managers to discuss your plans with each team. In addition, we recommend setting up scheduled tracking to only monitor devices during working hours to respect employee privacy during off-hours.

Best practice #2: Communicate often

Notify employees prior to implementation, provide enablement throughout the onboarding process, and establish regular touchpoints once you’re up and running to share insights and capture feedback.

To achieve this, we recommend a phased approach to communicating ActivTrak to your organization. First, share plans with team managers who will likely use data from ActivTrak. This will help them prepare to respond to questions from their teams. After you’ve explained ActivTrak and your goals to the leaders in your organization, we recommend inviting employees to a town hall-style meeting where you can answer questions and explain the goals you have for using ActivTrak. 

Best practice #3: Encourage ownership

By letting employees access their own data, you not only promote trust but also empower your people to make adjustments without outside intervention. With insight into their own work habits, employees gain a clearer understanding of how their work contributes to the organization’s success.

In addition, we recommend having managers schedule weekly or monthly reviews with team members to celebrate improvements, provide coaching advice, address any productivity blockers and talk about potential burnout risk.

It’s important to keep in mind that each job function has unique responsibilities, so it’s logical that employees in different roles will spend their time on different activities, and that work habits won’t look the same across the board. What defines a successful, productive salesperson is not what defines a successful, productive engineer. Avoid comparing apples to oranges and instead establish baselines and analyze metrics for similar roles to get accurate business insights. If you are concerned about any data you see, don’t make assumptions. Speak with employees to clear up possible misunderstandings before jumping to conclusions or taking any corrective actions.

Best practice #4: Put culture first

To promote trust and transparency while respecting employee privacy, prioritize insights — not oversight. By being transparent with employees about using productivity monitoring solutions and following the other best practices outlined in this article, your deployment of ActivTrak can facilitate a more sustainable and productive workplace that benefits leaders and employees alike. 

Note that your use of ActivTrak will be an ongoing process. It should be used as a tool for employers and employees alike to identify key areas that can unlock valuable productivity improvements. 

Change management and rollout support 

For additional help when introducing ActivTrak, contact your Customer Success Manager. The Productivity Lab is also a great resource for the latest insights on unlocking employees’ productivity potential. 

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