With the rise of online work-from-home jobs and freelancing, our concept of a workplace is steadily changing. Today, our notion of a traditional workplace can differ from the rooms filled with individual cubicles that we were used to. HubStaff, a software from a company of the same name established in the United States, offers its services for traditional, remote, or even entirely online offices.
An employee tracking software is used to track whether or not employees are keeping on with their responsibilities, as well as screen and look out for unwanted or prohibited activity. Apart from monitoring behavior, it can also be used to manage any sort of workplace and make it more productive.
Monitor Productivity and Improve Coordination with HubStaff Alternatives to 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 networking app is going to end up consuming hours of our time, even at work. Checking up 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 applications that hamper productivity.
HubStaff can take note of the sites (and even the url of the exact page) that employees see during work hours, as well as 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 allowing time slide on sites unrelated to work.
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Screen Monitoring
Monitoring individual screens is too much of a hassle and can be quite awkward if done personally. But then, it is crucial for when a remote workplace setup is in order where it is impossible to manage employees in person.
HubStaff has a feature that can enable managers to take screenshots of their employees’ screens at a customizable time interval, with 10 minutes as the default option. If it sounds too much of an invasion of privacy, then it can be set to have the screenshots be partly blurred. In this way, managers can determine if workers are working on their desks rather than playing games or watching movies, without exposing potential sensitive information.
It should be noted that employees would understand that this feature is activated on their displays. Employees would also be able to view the screenshots taken from their screens just so they’ll be ensured that this feature is implemented only for reasons related to work.
That said, this still has an effect on the behaviour of employees as knowing that their displays 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 step of employee activity. HubStaff can detect keyboard strokes and mouse interaction and detect times of inactivity where none of these instances are present.
HubStaff can then compare the overall time where the mouse or keyboard is busy to the total time spent working. HubStaff believes a productivity rate of at least 60% as a good sign. Productivity rates of less than 60% can mean that a worker is taking too much time on the desk doing nothing, or if a worker is doing too slowly.
The dashboard for this tool shows the productivity rate of every member of the group. In this way, the tool may also be used to see how many members of this team are working on a project at a specified time.
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Work Limit Monitoring Alternatives to 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 finish their jobs early, catch up on projects, and some are only workaholics who want to be running as much as possible.
However, it’s been proven that too much work could be detrimental as productivity and creativity declines without enough rest. There is a good reason why there is a standard 8 hours of work each day.
HubStaff can help managers track if employees are working a lot of hours per week. They can set the maximum time every week which workers can remain logged on for work. After the maximum time has been reached, then the time monitoring tool stops. This way, workaholic tendencies are suppressed, and that workers will not be given the incentive to put in too much time to work and sacrifice rest and personal time.
Monitor the Location of Employees
Managers working with remote teams might find it tough to communicate and organize the team. Some employees may be leaping from place to place for work, and even be operating from cafes or other workstations.
Setting up unplanned meetings can be hard if employees are commuting from one place to another, or if they’re doing field work.
Members of the team can install HubStaff in their telephones so that the employee place monitoring feature can be used. With this, managers and team leaders can track the location of the 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 on their phones, this can be seen as overly intrusive of a tool. But same as the rules on iOS and Android applications, employees will know exactly when their places are being tracked.
Project Progress Monitoring
HubStaff lets the entire group report on the progress of their tasks. HubStaff can then use this to offer a report on the status of each project on a weekly basis. On the staff dashboard, managers can see each individual employee’s working hours and a summary of the completed and uncompleted tasks. The dashboard also displays whether workers are online.
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Payroll, Timesheets, and other Miscellaneous Features Alternatives to Hubstaff
Besides monitoring 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 digital check-in and check-out mechanism for companies. And, better than conventional systems where timesheets can be cheated, the HubStaff timesheet tool can capture the very first keyboard stroke or mouse activity of the day for each employee.
Managers can also pause the machine manually for breaks.
With HubStaff, keeping a list of working hours and wages is also made simpler. HubStaff’s citizenship handling 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 easy. Cash transfers for payroll can even be automatically set to weekly, monthly, or on a set period.
Project Tracking for Clients Alternatives to Hubstaff
Being transparent to customers is key for establishing trust for your company. HubStaff makes it easy to communicate with clients, 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 adding clients into the members tab. From there, they can see the stages of the project, in addition to 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 great news for business owners who are already using other project management software.
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Employee Spying?
You might be wondering if using HubStaff to manage employees can be counterproductive as it may make an atmosphere of distrust between managers and staff members. To ease your mind, you can be certain that HubStaff lets the entire team know of the whole monitoring system. Employees can be sure that their activities are monitored only during work hours, and precisely how they’re being tracked.
However, as a company 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 monitoring system.
To put it simply, HubStaff is a tracking system rather than a surveillance system. Employees can be certain that only the instances of their keystrokes and mouse actions are recorded, rather than the actual keystroke that they register. HubStaff will not let managers and admins know what exactly 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 $10, while the Premium and Enterprise plans cost $10 and $20 respectively.
Just the Premium and Enterprise plans unlock features associated with payroll administration. The enterprise feature includes fleet monitoring and even a concierge accounts.
For those people who are ready to pay on an annual basis, then the price per person per month of their paid plans will be slashed down to $5, 8$, and $16, respectively.
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Verdict Alternatives to 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 intuitive and clean, and is not at all confusing, requiring only minimal orientation for employees not knowledgeable about the software.
However, it has to be said that not all companies might benefit fully from using HubStaff. HubStaff is especially suited to contemporary desk jobs, and for projects where staff members use computers for most of their time. Take jobs that take a lot of reading for example, where employees might appear to be inactive based on computer interaction. The software might say that they are inactive, but they just might be on top of a reading assignment in reality
Business owners should also not completely depend on the information that HubStaff collects to determine whether their employees are being productive or not. HubStaff is simply a project management software using features and tools that will allow you to gauge the performance of workers and other members of the group. This is certainly not a virtual or artificial intelligence office 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 Alternatives to Hubstaff
Q: Where do the screenshots go?
A: HubStaff shops the screenshots and other information using Amazon AWS.
Q: Is there a maximum number of team members who can use HubStaff?
A: The paid programs have a minimum of 2 users and limit of 350 users.
Q: 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 only based on United States laws. It’s best to check with a lawyer for international users.
Q: Can employees choose when they’re being tracked?
A: Yes, employees can manually start and end HubStaff tracking and have it run in the background. HubStaff does not collect any data once tracking ends.