With the rise of internet work-from-home jobs and freelancing, our concept of a workplace is steadily changing. Now, our notion of a traditional workplace can differ 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 entirely online offices.
An employee monitoring 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 illegal activity. Aside from monitoring behaviour, it can also be used to manage any sort of workplace and make it more productive.
Monitor Productivity and Improve Coordination with HubStaff Basecamp Hubstaff
HubStaff includes the features that you would expect from an employee monitoring software such as:
Online Activity Monitoring:
All of us 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 in the workplace. Assessing on important notifications from time to time is acceptable, but it’s helpful if supervisors know when it’s becoming a problem. HubStaff can help track if workers use too much social media and other applications that hamper productivity.
HubStaff can pay attention to the sites (and even the url of the specific page) that workers visit during work hours, as well as the time they spend on it. Traffic from applications may also be tracked and the time spent on them can also be listed.
The information is displayed neatly, and supervisors can see the page title of the visited webpages, the url, and the time spent, all in one glance. They can also visit the links displayed to confirm if employees really are allowing time slide on websites unrelated to work.
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Display Monitoring
Monitoring individual screens is too much of a hassle and can be quite awkward if done personally. But then, it’s crucial for when a remote workplace setup is in order where it’s impossible to manage 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 option. If it sounds too much of an invasion of privacy, then it can be set to have the screenshots be partly blurred. This way, managers can determine if employees are working in their desks instead of 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 screens. Employees would also have the ability to look at the screenshots taken from their screens just so that they’ll be assured that this feature is implemented just for reasons related to work.
That said, this still has an influence on the behaviour of employees as knowing that their displays are tracked is enough of a reason for them to perform 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 worker activity. HubStaff can detect keyboard strokes and mouse interaction and discover times of inactivity where none of these instances are found.
HubStaff can then compare the overall time where the mouse or keyboard is active to the total time spent working. HubStaff believes a productivity rate of at least 60% as a great sign. Productivity rates of less than 60% can indicate that an employee 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 group. In this way, the tool may also be used to see how many members of the team are working on a project at a given time.
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Work Limit Monitoring Basecamp Hubstaff
Working overtime is also becoming more of a standard, even so in countries like Japan where it’s an unofficial standard. Reasons can range from employees wanting to complete their jobs early, catch up on projects, and some are only workaholics who want to be working 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 great reason why there’s a standard 8 hours of work every day.
HubStaff can help managers monitor if workers are working too much hours per week. They can set the maximum time each week that employees can stay logged on for work. Following the maximum time has been reached, then the time monitoring tool stops. In this manner, workaholic tendencies are curbed, and that employees won’t be given the incentive to put in a lot of 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 might be jumping from place to place for work, and even be working from cafes or other workstations.
Setting up unplanned meetings can be difficult if workers are commuting from 1 place to another, or if they are doing field work.
Members of the group can install HubStaff on their smartphones so that the employee place monitoring feature can be used. With this, supervisors 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 long is spent on each location. From these data, managers can determine the best time to do quick meetings.
As this requires employees to install HubStaff in their phones, this may be seen as overly intrusive of a tool. But same as the principles on iOS and Android programs, employees will know exactly 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 every job on a weekly basis. On the team dashboard, managers can see each individual employee’s working hours and a summary of their completed and uncompleted tasks. The dashboard also shows whether workers are online.
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Payroll, Timesheets, and other Miscellaneous Features Basecamp Hubstaff
Besides monitoring employee productivity, HubStaff can also make it easier for managers and admins to handle payrolls and manage accounts.
Timesheet and Payroll Management
HubStaff can function as a virtual check-in and check-out mechanism for businesses. And, better than traditional systems where timesheets can be cheated, the HubStaff timesheet tool can record 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 record of working hours and wages is also made simpler. HubStaff’s citizenship handling tool can determine each employee’s payout based on the hours logged for them. By linking their paypal accounts with HubStaff, then payment transfers are made simple. Cash transfers for payroll can even be automatically set to weekly, monthly, or on a set interval.
Project Tracking for Clients Basecamp Hubstaff
Becoming transparent to clients is key for establishing trust for your business. HubStaff makes it easy to communicate with clients, as well as assure them that things are moving as agreed upon.
HubStaff makes it easy for clients to take a peek into the progress of projects. This can be simply accomplished by including clients into the members tab. From there, they could see the stages of the project, in addition to the pending and completed tasks.
Third party Software Integration
HubStaff can integrate nicely with other project tracking tools including but not limited to Asana and Trello. This is great news for business owners that 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 may make a feeling of distrust between managers and team members. To ease your mind, you can be sure that HubStaff lets the whole team know of the whole monitoring system. Employees can make certain that their actions are monitored only during work hours, and exactly how they are being monitored.
However, as a business owner or manager, it’s your responsibility to let your workers know beforehand that your workplace 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 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 won’t let managers and admins know what exactly their workers are typing.
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Pricing
HubStaff has three paid plans 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.
Only the Premium and Enterprise plans unlock attributes related to payroll management. The enterprise feature comprises fleet tracking and even a concierge accounts.
For those who are willing to pay on an annual basis, then the price per person per month of the paid programs will be slashed down to $5, 8$, and $16, respectively.
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Verdict Basecamp 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 do the job that it promises to do. The user interface is clean and intuitive, and isn’t in any way confusing, requiring only minimal orientation for employees not familiar with the software.
However, it must be said that not all businesses might benefit fully from using HubStaff. HubStaff is specially suited to modern desk tasks, and for projects where staff members use computers for the majority of their time. Take jobs that require a lot of reading for example, 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 rely on the data that HubStaff collects to determine if their employees are being productive or not. HubStaff is simply a project management software with features and tools that can help you gauge the performance of workers and other members of the team. This is in no way 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 Basecamp 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 who can use HubStaff?
A: The paid plans have a minimum of two users and cap of 350 users.
Q: Is implementing HubStaff in businesses completely legal?
A: HubStaff has complete legal permissions for use, and resources regarding them can be found on their website. However, these are just based on United States laws. It’s best to check with a lawyer for international users.
Q: Can employees choose when they are being monitored?
A: Yes, employees can manually start and end HubStaff tracking and have it run in the background. HubStaff does not collect any data once monitoring ends.