As a manager, I feel that using metrics from productivity tools to measure productivity is lazy and counter productive. If your team is so large that you can’t measure productivity without using these cheats, then your team is too large for you to manage. But you’re also ignoring the fact that people work in different ways, and may be just as productive without generating the metrics you’re looking for. And before you tell me you can just taper the metrics, why not just spend time with your team setting goals that can be measured in an open and direct way?

In my opinion, all these tools do is reward employees that work the way you do, which may improve stats on your metrics, but will encourage group think and diminish creativity.

Happy to be proved wrong, with some facts.