With the rise of internet work-from-home jobs and freelancing, our notion of a workplace is steadily changing. Now, our notion of a conventional workplace can be different from the rooms full of individual cubicles that we were used to. HubStaff, a software from a firm of the same name based in the United States, offers its services for traditional, distant, or even completely online workplaces.
An employee monitoring software is used to monitor whether or not employees are keeping on with their responsibilities, in addition to screen and be aware of unwanted or illegal activity. Apart from monitoring behavior, it may also be used to handle any sort of workplace and make it more productive.
Monitor Productivity and Improve Coordination with HubStaff Alternative of Hubstaff
HubStaff includes the features that you would expect from an employee tracking software such as:
Online Activity Monitoring:
We all know full well that social media kills productivity. All too often, a few swipes on any social media app is going to end up consuming hours of our time, even at work. Assessing on important notifications from time to time is acceptable, but it’s helpful if managers know when it’s becoming a problem. HubStaff can help track if employees use too much social media and other programs that hamper productivity.
HubStaff can pay attention to the websites (and even the url of the exact page) that workers visit during work hours, in addition to the time they spend on it. Traffic from applications may also be monitored and the time spent on these is also listed.
The data is displayed neatly, and supervisors can see the page title of the visited pages, the url, and the time spent, all in a single glance. They can also go to the links displayed to verify if employees really are letting time slide on websites unrelated to work.
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Display Monitoring
Tracking individual screens is too much of a hassle and can be quite awkward if done personally. But then, it is necessary for when a remote workplace setup is in order where it’s impossible to handle employees in person.
HubStaff has a feature that can enable managers to take screenshots of the employees’ screens at a customizable time interval, with 10 minutes as the default. If it sounds too much of an invasion of privacy, then it could be set to have the screenshots be partially blurred. This way, managers can determine if employees are working on their desks rather than playing games or watching movies, without exposing potential sensitive information.
It must be noted that workers would know that this feature is activated on their screens. Employees would also have the ability to look at the screenshots taken from their screens just so they’ll be assured that this feature is implemented just for reasons related to work.
With that said, this still has an influence on the behaviour of employees as knowing that their screens are monitored is enough of a reason for them to execute their tasks.
Monitor Activity on Computer Peripheral Devices
In standard office setups, the sound of keyboard strokes and mouse clicks can be enough of a measure of worker activity. HubStaff can detect keyboard strokes and mouse interaction and detect times of inactivity where none of those instances are found.
HubStaff can then compare the overall time where the mouse or keyboard is active to the overall time spent working. HubStaff believes a productivity rate of at least 60% as a good sign. Productivity rates of less than 60% may mean that a worker is taking too much time on the desk doing nothing, or if an employee is doing too slowly.
The dashboard for this tool displays the productivity rate of each member of the team. This way, the tool may also be used to see how many members of this team are working on a project at a given time.
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Work Limit Monitoring Alternative of Hubstaff
Working overtime is also becoming more of a norm, even so in countries such as Japan where it is an unofficial standard. Reasons can range from employees wanting to complete their tasks early, catch up on jobs, and some are only workaholics who want to be working as much as you can.
However, it’s been demonstrated that too much work can be harmful as productivity and creativity declines without enough rest. There’s a great reason why there’s a standard 8 hours of work each day.
HubStaff can help managers monitor if employees are working too much hours per week. They could set the maximum time each week that employees can stay logged on for work. After the maximum time has been reached, then the time tracking tool stops. This way, workaholic tendencies are curbed, and that employees will not be given the incentive to put in too much time to work and sacrifice rest and personal time.
Monitor the Location of Workers
Managers working with remote teams may find it tough to communicate and coordinate the team. Some employees might be leaping from place to place for work, and also be operating from cafes or other workstations.
Setting up unplanned meetings can be difficult if workers are commuting from one place to another, or if they’re doing field work.
Members of the team can install HubStaff on their telephones so that the employee place monitoring feature can be used. With this, managers and team leaders can monitor the location of their members during work hours.
HubStaff can display how much time employees spend on commuting between places and how much time is spent on each location. From these data, managers can determine the best time to do rapid meetings.
As this needs employees to install HubStaff in their phones, this can be seen as overly intrusive of a tool. But same as the principles on iOS and Android programs, employees will know precisely when their locations are being monitored.
Project Progress Monitoring
HubStaff lets the entire team report on the progress of their tasks. HubStaff can then use this to offer a report on the status of each job on a weekly basis. On the staff dashboard, managers can see each individual employee’s working hours and a summary of their completed and uncompleted tasks. The dashboard also displays whether employees are online.
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Payroll, Timesheets, and other Miscellaneous Features Alternative of Hubstaff
Besides tracking employee productivity, HubStaff can also make it easier for managers and admins to manage payrolls and manage accounts.
Timesheet and Payroll Management
HubStaff can function as a virtual check-in and check-out mechanism for companies. And, better than conventional systems where timesheets can be cheated, the HubStaff timesheet tool can record the first keyboard stroke or mouse activity of the day for each employee.
Managers can also pause the system manually for breaks.
With HubStaff, maintaining a record of working hours and salaries is also made simpler. HubStaff’s payroll managing tool can determine each employee’s payout depending on the hours logged for them. By linking their paypal accounts with HubStaff, then payment transfers are made simple. Money transfers for payroll can even be automatically set to weekly, monthly, or on a set period.
Project Tracking for Clients Alternative of Hubstaff
Being transparent to clients is key for establishing trust for your business. HubStaff makes it easy to communicate with customers, in addition to assure them that things are moving as agreed upon.
HubStaff makes it simple for clients to have a peek into the progress of jobs. This can be simply done by including clients into the members tab. From there, they could see the stages of the project, as well as the pending and completed tasks.
Third party Applications Integration
HubStaff can integrate well with other project monitoring tools such as but not limited to Asana and Trello. This is good news for business owners who are already using other project management applications.
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Employee Spying?
You might be wondering if using HubStaff to handle employees can be counterproductive as it might make a feeling of distrust between managers and team members. To ease your mind, you can be certain that HubStaff lets the entire team know of the entire monitoring system. Employees can make certain that their activities are monitored only during work hours, and precisely how they’re being monitored.
However, as a business owner or manager, it is your responsibility to let your employees know beforehand that your office will be implementing HubStaff. Additionally, HubStaff should only be installed on the devices necessary for work where it would make sense to have implement a tracking system.
To put it simply, HubStaff is a tracking system and not a surveillance system. Employees can be sure that only the instances of the keystrokes and mouse activity are listed, and not the actual keystroke that they register. HubStaff won’t let managers and admins know just what their employees are typing.
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Pricing
HubStaff has three paid programs that charge a fixed price per user per month. The Basic plan costs $7, while the Premium and Enterprise plans cost $10 and $20 respectively.
Only the Premium and Enterprise plans unlock attributes related to payroll management. The enterprise feature includes fleet monitoring and even a concierge account.
For those who are willing to pay on an annual basis, then the cost per person per month of the paid plans will be slashed down to $5, 8$, and $16, respectively.
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Verdict Alternative of Hubstaff
It’s important to find the right software for your business since this will allow you to, in a way, outsource some of your tasks to the specific software.
You can be sure that HubStaff can flawlessly perform the job that it promises to do. The user interface is clean and intuitive, and is not in any way confusing, requiring only minimal orientation for employees not familiar with the software.
However, it has to be stated that not all businesses might benefit fully from using HubStaff. HubStaff is especially suited to modern desk jobs, and for projects where team members use computers for most of their time. Take jobs that require a whole lot of reading for instance, where employees might seem to be inactive based on computer interaction. The software might say that they are inactive, but they just might be at the top of a reading assignment in reality
Business owners should also not completely depend on the data that HubStaff collects to determine if their employees are being productive or not. HubStaff is merely a project management software using features and tools that will help you gauge the performance of employees and other members of the group. This is in no way a virtual or artificial intelligence workplace manager.
All the same, HubStaff collects data seamlessly, and we all know that data helps you run your business effectively.
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FAQ Alternative of Hubstaff
Q: Where do the screenshots go?
A: HubStaff shops the screenshots and other data using Amazon AWS.
Q: Is there a maximum number of group members that can use HubStaff?
A: The paid plans have a minimum of 2 users and limit of 350 users.
Q: Why is implementing HubStaff in companies completely legal?
A: HubStaff has complete legal permissions for use, and resources regarding them can be found on their site. However, these are just based on United States laws. It is best to check with a lawyer for international users.
Q: Can employees choose when they are being tracked?
A: Yes, employees can manually start and finish HubStaff tracking and have it run in the background. HubStaff doesn’t collect any data once monitoring ends.