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Productivity is the hallmark of a healthy workplace culture. The more productive your employees are, the easier it is to achieve high ROI and long-term success.
No wonder, HR leaders are taking productivity-boosting initiatives.
For instance, they offer employee-centric perks, such as flexible working schedules, unlimited vacations, paid-offs, and more, to help the team stay productive while maintaining a work-life balance.
Despite all this, HR leaders find it challenging to keep top talent productive, engaged, and happy. In fact, a recent report by Gallup revealed that only 21% of employees feel engaged at the workplace, thus impacting productivity.
The good news is - you can turn the tables by investing in several helpful tools to streamline your team's work processes, improve collaboration, and accelerate decision-making. This can help them ensure a healthy work-life balance, and deliver peak performance, thus boosting productivity.
In this post, we will share the top 21 employee productivity tools to help maximize your employees' performance.
Let's get started.
1. Xoxoday Empuls
Best for: Employee engagement and motivation
Xoxoday Empuls is an all-in-one, power-packed platform for holistic employee engagement and productivity designed to help teams communicate, collaborate, and engage with each other in a more efficient and effective manner. With Empuls, you can connect, collaborate, and motivate your team to build an employee-centric culture.
Top Features
- Social intranet
- Engagement and lifecycle surveys, polls, and quizzes
- Values and goals-based recognition
- Over 20+ reward categories with 21,000 reward options
- Dedicated reports and analytics
Pros
- Offers a complete engagement stack for teams of all sizes
- Helps drive powerful insights to accelerate data-driven actions
- Provides a modern interface for a seamless user experience
- Integrates with platforms Slack, Microsoft Teams, Freshteam, and more
Cons
- The trial plan comes with limited features.
Pricing
- Free: 30-day trial plan
- Paid Plans: $2/ $5/ custom pricing according to features
2. GanttPro
Best for: Team collaboration and progress tracking
This online project management platform offers Gantt charts and advanced functionalities like project progress tracking, team collaboration, and more. GanttPro helps teams schedule, streamline, manage, and complete complex projects on time.
Top Features
- Team collaboration with files, comments, and notifications
- Task and deadline management
- Time logs
- Resource workload
- Report export and sharing via public URL
Pros
- Offers visually appealing Gantt charts
- Allows managers to assign individual tasks
- Provides an easy-to-use interface for a great user experience
- Helps team managers set project statuses, priorities, costs, and more
- Offers time log reports for effective time management
Cons
- The tool can seem complex and overwhelming for beginners.
Pricing
- Free: 30-day trial plan
- Paid Plans: $7.99/ $12.99/ $19.99/ custom pricing according to features
3. Calendar
Best for: Time management and meeting scheduling
This online time management platform helps employees schedule and manage work-related appointments for better productivity.
Top Features
- Artificial intelligence and machine learning-based tool
- Meeting location options like phone number, Zoom link, and more
- Dedicated dashboard for time management
Pros
- Shares calendars with individual employees
- Automates team meeting scheduling and invitation
- Offers analytics tools to track the team's productivity
- Integrates with digital calendars like Outlook, Google Calendar, and iCal
Cons
- Cluttered interface
Pricing
- Free: Basic plan
- Paid Plans: $20/ $24 per month
4. Clean Email
Best for: Employee email inbox management
This platform is an effective antidote to one of the top productivity roadblocks - a cluttered email inbox. It provides several tools to help employees delete unwanted emails and block and unsubscribe spam users.
Top Features
- Automated email inbox management
- Bulk email organization
- Intelligent categorization of emails
- Unwanted emails blocking
Pros
- Cleans up old messages (over three years)
- Offers detailed views with predefined filters
- Automates sender identification process
- Saves emails from data breaches and security incidents
Cons
- Frequent app crashes
Pricing
- Paid Plans: ₹ 731.60/ ₹ 1,438.42/ ₹ 2,181.82 per month
5. Right Inbox
Best for: Email scheduling, tracking, and management
This Gmail extension offers features like email scheduling, management, and tracking to help employees manage work hassle-free. This saves their time, thus boosting productivity.
Top Features
- Personalized email templates
- Email opening rate tracker
- Automatic follow-ups
- Email notes and reminders
- Multiple sender signatures
Pros
- Schedules emails at the specified time
- Offers email reminders for crucial business conversations
- Provides multiple signature generation at one click
- Allows embedding GIFs in emails
- Integrates with CRM tools like Zapier, Zoho, HubSpot, and more
Cons
- Limited features in the trial version
Pricing
- Free: 5 emails per month
- Paid Plans: $7.95/ $14.95 per month
6. Boomerang
Best for: Employee meeting scheduling
This is an advanced meeting scheduling and email management platform. It allows employees to schedule meetings, track attendees' responses, and more without hassles.
Top Features
- Gmail extension
- Outlook extension
- Dedicated mobile apps for iOS and Android users
Pros
- Email management and tracking
- User-friendly interface
- Offers emails reminders
- Schedules outgoing emails
Cons
- The basic plan offers limited features.
Pricing
- Free: 30-day free trial
- Paid Plans: $4.98/ $14.98/ $49.98 per month
7. Shift
Best for: Streamlining workflows
This effective desktop platform streamlines workflows, accounts, and applications. Shift helps employees toggle between multiple Office 365, Gmail, and Outlook accounts, without hassles.
Top Features
- Unified platform for apps and accounts management
- Cross-platform support (Windows, MacOS, and Linux)
- Focused browsing web tabs
- Access Boomerang, Grammarly, and more
- Custom desktop notifications
Pros
- Unifies search across email, Google Calendar, Drive, and others
- Allows creation of a dedicated workspace
- Provides customized alerts or mute to stay on-task
- Offers password and file management provision
Cons
- The 30-day trial plan offers limited features.
Pricing
- Free: $0 for two accounts (per month)
- Paid Plans: $149 per year
8. Slack
Best for: Team communication and collaboration
This is one of the best team collaboration and communication platforms. It allows sharing messages, files, and more to help teams work efficiently.
Top Features
- Chat and team collaboration
- Workflow builder
- Two-factor authentication
- Channels to organize business conversations
- Seamless conversations over video and audio
Pros
- Provides unlimited communication channel creation provision
- Integrates with Dropbox, Google Drive, Box, and more
- Offers complete control over data accessibility
- Inbuilt with identity management tools
Cons
- The basic plan offers history access for only 90 days.
Pricing
- Free: $0/month with limited features
- Paid Plans: ₹ 218/ ₹ 375.20 per month/ custom as per features
9. Chanty
Best for: Team communication and collaboration
This AI-powered employee messaging app offers unlimited group messaging and integrated video provisions for team collaboration.
Top Features
- Simple and intuitive user interface
- Real-time collaboration
- Three-dot menu to pin messages
- Code snippets with dev-friendly formatting
- Deadline-driven task assignment
Pros
- Provides seamless onboarding across multiple devices
- Allows sharing GIFs, YouTube, and other social content
- Offers quick access to employee messaging history
- Allows assigning and filtering tasks by people, status, and date
Cons
- No mute provision for channels
Pricing
- Free: $0 for limited features
- Paid Plans: $3 user/month
10. Fleep
Best for: Task management and collaboration
Fleep is a team collaboration tool that helps employees collaborate and coordinate on projects in real-time using built-in file-sharing, messaging, and task management features.
Top Features
- Flexible collaboration between teams
- 100 GB file sharing space
- Dedicated project management taskboard
- Desktop and mobile app
Pros
- Offers unlimited conversations
- Allows managing and controlling the data access
- Provides users with customer support
Cons
- Lacks integration options
Pricing
- Paid Plans: €5 user/ month and custom plans
11. Grammarly
Best for: Plagiarism-free content creation
This cloud-based typing assistant reviews grammar, spelling, punctuation, and more to help employees proofread and edit business documents efficiently.
Top Features
- Real-time feedback
- Clarity-focused content rewrites
- Plagiarism detection
- Tone adjustments
- Word choice and fluency
- Formality level
Pros
- Checks sentences for readability and clarity
- Cleans up hard-to-read content
- Offers guidance to adjust the tone of writing
- Catches missing punctuation and errors
- Analyzes word choice and sentence structure
Cons
- No integration with Google Docs
Pricing
- Free: $0 for basic writing recommendations
- Paid Plans: Customized plans starting from $25 per month
12. Zoom
Best for: Employee communication and engagement
This cutting-edge technology-equipped communication platform allows employees to connect via audio, video, chat, and phone.
Top Features
- High-quality video and audio
- Hassle-free meeting schedule
- Screen sharing and recording
- Whiteboards
- User-friendly interface
Pros
- Offers single sign-on provision
- Helps teams conduct online events
- Allows users to activate automated captions
- Provides 24*7 customer support
Cons
- Requires strong internet support for video clarity
- Requires app download and installation
Pricing
- Free: 40 minutes of the basic plan
- Paid Plans: $149/ $199/ custom plans as per features
13. Toggl
Best for: Employee performance management
This intuitive, frictionless time-tracking platform helps employees work efficiently and boost their performance.
Top Features
- Visual workload management
- Unlimited team timelines
- In-app and email notifications
- Unlimited plan boards
- Shareable timelines
Pros
- Offers an instant overview of team progress
- Helps track billable time in companies
- Offers offline time tracking functionalities
- Supports mobile device
- Provides insightful employee work reports
Cons
- Errors in tag entries
Pricing
- Free: 14-day free trial
- Paid Plans: $8 / $13.35 monthly
14. Evernote
Best for: Employee performance improvement
This is a trustworthy, powerful note-making application to help employees stay organized and get more done.
Top Features
- Widgets and customization options
- Multiple Google Calendar account sync
- Geographic content search
- Notebooks in PDF file format
- Integration with Slack, Salesforce, and others
Pros
- Allows to create, manage, and assign tasks
- Provides search provision from business cards
- Offers Boolean terms to filter search results
- Allows to add attachments, links, and audio recordings
- Helps track 360-degree employee progress
Cons
- Complete suite features are available for premium app users.
Pricing
- Free: Limited capabilities
- Paid Plans: custom plans as per features
15. Freedom
Best for: Employee focus and productivity
This website blocker application helps employees reclaim productivity and focus. Freedom supports platforms like Windows, Mac, Android, Chrome, and iOS.
Top Features
- Unlimited sessions across devices
- Advance scheduling
- Recurring scheduled sessions
- Locked mode
- Music and ambient sounds
- Session annotation and history
Pros
- Allows to block unwanted websites during work
- Helps employees plan recurring sessions that recur daily/weekly
- Offers unlimited customized blocklists
Cons
- It requires several OS upgrades.
Pricing
- Free: Basic version
- Paid Plans: Custom plans as per features, starting at $3.33 per month
16. Forest
Best for: Employee creativity, focus, and productivity
This is a creative, focus-boosting application that allows employees to work productively. The graphical representation of trees in the app represents focus time. They grow every time you work efficiently.
Top Features
- Creativity-enhancing graphics
- User-friendly interface
- Inbuilt productivity monitoring tools
- Multilingual support
Pros
- Allows white-listing of several applications
- Offers effective time management
- Does tree plantation on the user's behalf (for earning 2500 points)
Cons
- The graphics could be more appealing.
Pricing
- Paid Plans: $7.99/ $14.99/ $34.99 (varies as per months and features)
17. LiveAgent
Best for: Work management and customer support
This is a powerful help desk and live-chat solution that helps employees bring personalization to customer interactions and work efficiently.
Top Features
- Conversation management
- Live chat button
- API keys
- Customer email templates
- Customized video call widgets
Pros
- Provides a unified interface for customer interactions
- Customer information storage and management
- Offers two-step verification for enhanced security
Cons
- Cluttered interface
Pricing
- Free: 7-day free trial
- Paid Plans: $9/ $29/ 49 per agent
18. SaneBox
Best for: Email management and productivity
This application automatically cleans up employees' inboxes to help them focus on crucial business conversations.
Top Features
- Email templates
- Artificial intelligence (AI) sorting
- Custom notifications
- Predefined rules
- Automated email scheduling
Pros
- Allows teams to prioritize and filter emails
- Saves all the attachments into the cloud
- Allows snoozing emails until a predefined time
Cons
- No free-of-cost plans
Pricing
- Paid Plans: $3.49/ $5.99/ $16.99 monthly
19. RescueTime
Best for: Workflow optimization and time management
This automated time-tracking software allows employees to optimize daily workflow and boosts productivity.
Top Features
- Automatic time capture
- Project timesheet management
- Alert notifications
- Focus sessions
- Custom reports
Pros
- Monitors productive periods and idle time
- Helps manage employee database
- Offers mobile access and screen activity recording
Cons
- Outdated user interface
- Limited customization options
Pricing
- Free: 14-day free trial
- Paid Plans: $6.5 / $12 monthly
20. LastPass
Best for: Employee data security and work management
This secure password manager helps save employees' usernames and passwords in a vault so they do not have to log in multiple times.
Top Features
- Passwordless login
- Zero-knowledge security model
- Shared folders
- Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
- Dedicated security dashboard
Pros
- Allows importing or creating groups to organize users
- Helps optimize shared folders and set user-specific policies
- Streamlines deployment while ensuring the security
- Customizable access and authentication policies
- Data visualization tool to highlight enrollment problems
- Offers detailed reports on user activity, data security, policies, and more
Cons
- Complex interface
Pricing
- Free: Basic version
- Paid Plans: $3 / $4 annually billed
21. StayFocusd
Best for: Employee focus and productivity
This productivity extension for Google Chrome helps employees work efficiently by minimizing distractions.
Top Features
- Website blocking
- Browser extension
- Blocks Facebook notifications
- Application usage history
Pros
- Allows blocking websites and applications on an hourly or daily basis
- Offers custom blocking options like specific pages, content, images, and more
- Provides a time-tracking tool to view time spent on websites
- Equips with quick play and pause feature
Cons
- Extension available only for Chrome
Pricing
- Free-of-cost tool
Conclusion
Enhanced employee productivity can make a massive difference in your firm. From boosting employee morale to creating a happy work culture and boosting ROI and revenue, it can help achieve all goals.
The top 21 employee productivity tools shared in this post can help take your firm a notch higher. So, implement them to witness a positive transformation.
