How Workforce Intelligence Reveals the Hidden Cost of Modern Work

The math is brutal: for every 1,000 employees, organizations lose the productivity equivalent of 130 workers, bleeding $11.2 million annually through what amounts to digital evaporation. This is caused by a fundamental inability to see how work actually happens in distributed, digital environments.

I recently spent time with Javier Aldrete and the leadership team at ActivTrak, diving deep into their evolution from activity monitoring to what they now call a workforce intelligence platform. What emerged from our discussion was a stark picture of how enterprises are flying blind when it comes to understanding workforce capacity, with one department might carry the equivalent of 34.6 unutilized full-time employees while others desperately request headcount. ActivTrak has grown tremendously in the past two years, with 70% year-over-year growth in enterprise deals, suggesting they’re hitting a nerve in how organizations think about workforce optimization.

This type of vendor innovation is exactly what Brandon Hall Group™ tracks through our solution provider research and advisory services, helping both buyers understand the market landscape and vendors position their unique value effectively.

 

The Measurement Crisis

The workplace transformation everyone talks about has created a measurement crisis nobody wants to acknowledge. Return-to-office mandates affect 70% of employers, yet companies lack basic visibility into whether people are actually in the office or whether it matters. AI adoption is growing, but organizations can’t tell if that translates to changed work patterns or just expensive chat interfaces. Meanwhile, CHROs scramble to deliver more value at lower cost while operating with less visibility than ever before.

The traditional workforce management tools that worked for call centers and manufacturing floors break down completely when applied to knowledge work. You can’t time-study a software developer the way you time-study an assembly line. You can’t measure creative problem-solving with badge swipes and timesheet entries.

These are the complex workforce challenges we help organizations navigate through our enterprise membership program, where companies gain access to research, advisory services and peer insights on emerging solutions like workforce intelligence platforms.

 

The Competitive Reality Check

The workforce analytics space has attracted varied approaches, each with distinct profiles:

Teramind features security-focused monitoring, detailed user activity tracking, and data loss prevention, identifying unproductive time and work patterns, enabling managers to direct workforce performance. It does not monitor mobile devices and individual user licensing can be expensive.

Insightful enables real-time work monitoring, project tracking, and automated time mapping to projects. It is primarily focused on time tracking rather than work pattern analysis.

Hubstaff offers GPS tracking for field workers, invoice generation and basic productivity monitoring. It is more suited for hourly/contract workers and lacks advanced analytics for knowledge worker optimization.

Time Doctor provides screenshot capture, website/app tracking and distraction alerts. There has been some feedback about the intrusive monitoring approach. It also has limited strategic insights and is focused on surveillance rather than workforce intelligence.

This competitive analysis reflects the type of market intelligence we provide through our corporate research and advisory offerings, helping organizations make informed decisions about technology investments.

 

The Intelligence Layer That Changes Everything

The technical differentiation of ActivTrak, a Brandon Hall Group™ Excellence Award winner since 2020, centers on three key innovations that transform raw activity data into actionable intelligence:

Financial Loss Analysis Dashboard

  • Translates underutilization directly into dollar amounts by department.
  • Identifies “untapped capacity” measured in FTE equivalents.
  • Shows trending patterns to distinguish temporary dips from systemic issues.
  • Early adopters report a 15-20% reduction in idle capacity within 90 days.

Activity Alignment Engine

  • Distinguishes high-value work from administrative tasks using AI classification.
  • Maps individual activity patterns against role expectations.
  • Identifies “misaligned” workers who are busy but unproductive.
  • Reveals that top performers spend 70-80% of their time on core activities.

False Activity Detection

  • Identifies mouse jiggler and automated activity patterns.
  • Validates genuine work versus simulated presence.
  • Critical for remote/hybrid environments where trust replaces supervision.
  • Addresses the “overemployment” phenomenon where workers hold multiple full-time roles.

 

Who Benefits from Workforce Intelligence

Mid-market financial services. The industry struggles with contractor billing reconciliation and the complex web of compliance requirements that govern their operations. By implementing automated verification systems that match billed hours against actual activity, these organizations gain visibility into their contractor spending.

Healthcare organizations with distributed teams. Their primary concern is centered on ensuring proper utilization of staff resources while managing the complexities of round-the-clock coverage. Through real-time capacity visualization and schedule adherence tracking, these healthcare providers achieve a delicate balance. They successfully reduce overtime costs that had been straining budgets while maintaining the coverage requirements essential for patient care.

Insurance companies managing hybrid policies. They navigate the complexities of hybrid work arrangements, needing to implement return-to-office policies without sacrificing the flexibility that had become essential to employee satisfaction. Location-based productivity analysis and presence verification tools provide these companies with objective data about work patterns and outcomes. This enables them to make informed, data-driven decisions about office space investments and hybrid work policies that balance organizational needs with employee preferences.

Business process outsourcers (BPOs). They face the dual pressure of demonstrating clear value to their clients while optimizing their own margins in a highly competitive market. By deploying granular productivity metrics directly tied to client deliverables, BPOs gained precise insights into performance at both individual and team levels. This enables targeted coaching interventions that drive per-employee productivity.

Professional services firms. These companies confront the perennial challenge of maximizing billable hours without pushing their talented workforce toward burnout. Work pattern analysis reveals previously hidden inefficiencies in workflows that constrain productivity. Armed with these insights, firms can restructure their processes and eliminate bottlenecks.

Understanding which solution fits your organization’s specific needs requires careful evaluation — the kind of analysis we facilitate through research and advisory services, where we help match organizational requirements with vendor capabilities.

 

The Analyst View: Beyond Surveillance Theater

ActivTrak occupies an interesting position in the workforce analytics market. While competitors focus either on security or basic time tracking, ActivTrak has positioned itself as the translation layer between workforce activity and business outcomes. Their evolution from monitoring tool to intelligence platform reflects a broader market shift from measuring presence to measuring value.

The company’s privacy-first approach, which allows organizations to dial data collection up or down based on use case, addresses the trust deficit that has plagued employee monitoring solutions. You can start with basic utilization metrics requiring minimal data collection, then expand to process optimization only where needed. This graduated approach reduces resistance while building organizational confidence in data-driven workforce management.

Their customer roster — including Principal, Zurich Insurance, and Aldo — suggests enterprise readiness, though the real validation comes from their ROI metrics. When Echo Global Logistics can identify 34.6 FTEs of untapped capacity in a single department, or when PartsASAP achieves 122X ROI through workforce optimization, you’re looking at a solution that transcends traditional monitoring.

The AI services layer they’re developing could become their most significant differentiator. As organizations feed AI agents and automation tools, ActivTrak’s procedural work data becomes invaluable for training these systems on how work actually flows through organizations. They’re essentially building the observability layer for the AI-augmented workforce, showing not just whether AI is being used, but whether it’s changing work patterns and outcomes.

For vendors like ActivTrak looking to effectively communicate this type of sophisticated value proposition, our Preferred Provider Program offers strategic guidance on market positioning and competitive differentiation.

 

Strategic Implications for 2026

ActivTrak sits at the intersection of several converging trends that will define workforce management through 2026. The combination of RTO mandates, AI adoption, and cost pressure creates demand for objective workforce intelligence that goes beyond surveys and assumptions. Their ability to translate activity patterns into financial impact gives them a unique voice in C-suite conversations about workforce strategy.

The challenge ahead lies in market education. Many organizations still conflate workforce analytics with employee surveillance, missing the strategic value of understanding work patterns and capacity. ActivTrak must continue positioning itself as the enabler of workforce optimization rather than monitors of employee behavior.

Their roadmap toward embedded AI training and workflow optimization positions them well for the next wave of workplace transformation. As organizations move from asking “are people working?” to “is work happening efficiently?” ActivTrak’s intelligence layer becomes increasingly critical. The companies that can see and optimize their true workforce capacity, rather than managing to headcount and hoping for the best, will define competitive advantage in the distributed work era.

The question isn’t whether organizations need workforce intelligence — it’s whether they can afford to operate without it.  In a market where a single percentage point of productivity improvement can mean millions in recovered value, flying blind is no longer an option.

For more insights on workforce analytics solutions and how to evaluate them for your organization, explore Brandon Hall Group’s research and advisory services. Solution providers interested in strategic market positioning can learn more about our vendor advisory programs.

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Claude Werder

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Claude Werder

Claude J. Werder Senior Vice President and Principal Analyst, Brandon Hall Group Claude Werder runs Brandon Hall Group’s Talent Management, Leadership Development and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DE&I) practices. His specific areas of focus include how organizations must transform culturally and strategically to meet the needs of the emerging workforce and workplace. Claude develops insights and solutions on employee experience, leadership, coaching, talent development, assessments, culture, DE&I, and other topics to help members and clients make talent development a competitive business advantage now and in the evolving future of work. Before joining Brandon Hall Group in 2012, Claude was an HR consultant and also spent more than 25 years as an executive and people leader for media and news organizations. This included a decade as the producer of the HR Technology Conference and Expo. He helped transform it from a small event to the world’s largest HR technology conference. Claude is a judge for the global Brandon Hall Group HCM Excellence Awards and Excellence in Technology Awards, contributes to the company’s HCM certification programs, and produces the firm’s annual HCM Excellence Conference. He is also a certified executive and leadership coach. He lives in Boynton Beach, FL.