With the rise of online work-from-home jobs and freelancing, our notion of a workplace is steadily changing. Today, 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 company of the same name established in the United States, offers its services for traditional, remote, or even entirely online workplaces.
An employee monitoring software is used to track whether or not employees are keeping on with their duties, as well as screen and be aware of unwanted or prohibited activity. Apart from monitoring behaviour, it may also be used to handle any type of workplace and make it more productive.
Monitor Productivity and Improve Coordination with HubStaff Basecamp2 and Hubstaff
HubStaff includes the features that you would expect from an employee tracking software such as:
Online Activity Monitoring:
All of us know full well that social media kills productivity. All too frequently, a few swipes on any social media app will end up consuming hours of our time, even in the workplace. Checking up on important notifications from time to time is acceptable, but it’s helpful if supervisors know when it is 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 sites (and even the url of the exact page) that workers see during work hours, in addition to the time they spend on it. Traffic from applications may also be monitored and the time spent on them is also recorded.
The information is displayed neatly, and managers can see the page name of the visited pages, the url, and the time spent, all in a single glance. They can also visit the links displayed to verify if employees really are allowing time slide on sites unrelated to work.
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Display Monitoring
Tracking individual screens is too much of a hassle and can be very awkward if done personally. But then, it’s crucial 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. In this way, managers can determine if workers are working in their desks instead of playing games or watching movies, without exposing possible sensitive information.
It must be noted that workers would understand that this feature is activated on their displays. Employees would also have the ability to look at the screenshots taken from their displays just so they’ll be assured that this feature is implemented only for reasons related to work.
That said, this still has an influence on the behavior of employees as knowing that their screens 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 measure of employee activity. HubStaff can detect keyboard strokes and mouse interaction and detect times of inactivity where none of these instances are found.
HubStaff can then compare the overall time in which 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 an employee 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 team. 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 Basecamp2 and Hubstaff
Working overtime is also becoming more of a standard, even so in countries like Japan where it is an unofficial standard. Reasons can range from employees wanting to complete their jobs early, catch up on jobs, and some are only workaholics who want to be working as much as you can.
However, it has been proven that too much work can be detrimental as productivity and creativity declines without enough rest. There’s a great reason why there is a standard 8 hours of work each day.
HubStaff can help managers monitor if workers 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 curbed, and that workers will not be given the incentive to put in a lot of time to work and sacrifice rest and personal time.
Monitor the Location of Workers
Managers working with remote teams may find it hard to communicate and organize the team. Some employees might be leaping from place to place for work, and even 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 smartphones so that the employee place monitoring feature can be utilized. 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 locations and how much time is spent on each location. From these data, managers can determine the best time to do rapid meetings.
As this requires employees to install HubStaff in their phones, this can be seen as too intrusive of a tool. But same as the rules on iOS and Android applications, employees will know precisely when their places are being tracked.
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 project on a weekly basis. On the staff dashboard, managers can view each individual employee’s working hours and a summary of the completed and uncompleted tasks. The dashboard also shows whether workers are online.
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Payroll, Timesheets, and other Miscellaneous Features Basecamp2 and Hubstaff
Aside from 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 record the very first keyboard stroke or mouse activity of the day for each employee.
Managers can also pause the system manually for breaks.
With HubStaff, keeping a list of working hours and wages is also made simpler. HubStaff’s payroll managing 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 easy. Cash transfers for payroll can even be automatically set to weekly, monthly, or on a set interval.
Project Tracking for Clients Basecamp2 and Hubstaff
Becoming transparent to clients is key for establishing trust for your company. HubStaff makes it effortless 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 projects. This can be simply accomplished by adding clients into the members tab. From there, they could see the phases of the project, in addition to the completed and pending tasks.
Third party Applications Integration
HubStaff can integrate well with other project tracking tools including but not limited to Asana and Trello. This is great news for business owners who are already using other project management applications.
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Employee Spying?
You may be asking yourself 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 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 precisely how they’re being monitored.
However, as a business owner or manager, it is your duty 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 their keystrokes and mouse actions are recorded, and not 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 plans 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 associated with payroll management. The enterprise feature comprises fleet monitoring and even a concierge accounts.
For those who are willing to pay on an annual basis, then the cost per person per month of the paid programs will be slashed down to $5, 8$, and $16, respectively.
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Verdict Basecamp2 and 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 is not in any way confusing, requiring only minimal orientation for workers not knowledgeable about the software.
However, it must be said that not all companies might benefit fully from utilizing HubStaff. HubStaff is especially suited to modern desk jobs, and for projects where staff members use computers for most of their time. Take jobs that take a 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 fact
Business owners should also not completely depend on the information that HubStaff collects to ascertain whether their employees are being productive or not. HubStaff is merely a project management software with tools and features that will help you gauge the performance of workers and other members of the team. 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 Basecamp2 and Hubstaff
Q: Where do the screenshots go?
A: HubStaff stores the screenshots and other information using Amazon AWS.
Q: Is there a maximum number of team members who may use HubStaff?
A: The paid plans have a minimum of 2 users and cap of 350 users.
Q: Is implementing HubStaff in companies completely legal?
A: HubStaff has complete legal permissions for use, and resources regarding them are available on their site. However, these are just based on United States laws. It is wise to check with a lawyer for international users.
Q: Can employees choose when they are 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 monitoring ends.