21 Employee Productivity Tools to Maximize Your Employees' Performance

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.