With the rise of internet work-from-home jobs and freelancing, our notion of a workplace is steadily changing. Today, our concept of a conventional 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 based in the United States, offers its services for traditional, remote, or even entirely online workplaces.
An employee tracking software is used to track whether or not employees are keeping on with their duties, as well as screen and look out for unwanted or prohibited activity. Apart 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 Chrome Extenion Hubstaff
HubStaff includes the features that you would expect from an employee monitoring 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 wind up consuming hours of our time, even at work. 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 employees use an excessive amount of 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 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 them can also be recorded.
The information is displayed neatly, and managers can see the page title of the visited pages, the url, and the time spent, all in one glance. They can also go to the links displayed to verify if workers really are allowing time slide on sites unrelated to work.
> > Click Here to try Hubstaff for Free! < <
Screen Monitoring
Monitoring individual screens is too much of a hassle and can be very awkward if done personally. But then, it is 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 their employees’ screens at a customizable time interval, with 10 minutes as the default. If this 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 workers are working on their desks rather than playing games or watching movies, without exposing possible sensitive information.
It should be noted that employees would understand that this feature is activated on their screens. Employees would also be able to look at the screenshots taken from their displays just so they’ll be ensured that this feature is implemented only for reasons related to work.
With 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 discover times of inactivity where none of those instances are present.
HubStaff can then compare the total time in which 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% may indicate 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 displays the productivity rate of every member of the team. 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.
> > Click Here to try Hubstaff for Free! < <
Work Limit Monitoring Chrome Extenion 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 vary from employees wanting to finish their tasks early, catch up on jobs, and some are just workaholics who want to be working as much as you can.
However, it has been demonstrated 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 employees are working too much hours per week. They can set the maximum time every week that workers 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 won’t 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 might find it tough to communicate and coordinate the team. Some employees may 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 employees are commuting from one place to another, or if they’re doing field work.
Members of the team can install HubStaff in their smartphones so that the employee location monitoring feature can be utilized. With this, managers and team leaders can track the location of their 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 quick 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 locations 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 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.
> > Click Here to try Hubstaff for Free! < <
Payroll, Timesheets, and other Miscellaneous Features Chrome Extenion 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 digital 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 first keyboard stroke or mouse action of the day for each worker.
Managers can also pause the system manually for breaks.
With HubStaff, keeping a record of working hours and wages is also made easier. 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 period.
Project Tracking for Clients Chrome Extenion 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 going as agreed upon.
HubStaff makes it easy for clients to take a peek into the progress of jobs. This can be simply done by including clients into the members tab. From there, they can see the phases of the project, as well as 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 good news for business owners who are already using other project management software.
> > Click Here to try Hubstaff for Free! < <
Employee Spying?
You may be asking yourself if using HubStaff to manage employees can be counterproductive since it may make an atmosphere of distrust between managers and staff 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 activities are monitored only during work hours, and precisely how they’re being monitored.
However, as a business owner or manager, it’s your responsibility to let your employees know beforehand that your workplace will be implementing HubStaff. Also, 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 monitoring system and not a surveillance system. Employees can be sure that only the instances of the keystrokes and mouse activity are recorded, and not the actual keystroke that they register. HubStaff won’t let managers and admins know just what their employees are typing.
> > Click Here to try Hubstaff for Free! < <
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.
Just the Premium and Enterprise plans unlock attributes related to payroll management. The enterprise feature comprises fleet monitoring and even a concierge accounts.
For those people who are willing 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.
> > Click Here to try Hubstaff for Free! < <
Verdict Chrome Extenion 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 claims to do. The user interface is intuitive and clean, and isn’t at all confusing, requiring only minimal orientation for workers not familiar with the software.
However, it has to be stated that not all companies might benefit fully from utilizing HubStaff. HubStaff is specially suited to modern desk jobs, and for projects where team members use computers for the majority of their time. Take jobs that take a whole 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 on 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 certainly not 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.
> > Click Here to try Hubstaff for Free! < <
FAQ Chrome Extenion 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 2 users and cap of 350 users.
Q: Why is implementing HubStaff in businesses 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 consult with a lawyer for international users.
Q: Can employees choose when they are being monitored?
A: Yes, employees can manually start and end HubStaff monitoring and have it run in the background. HubStaff doesn’t collect any data once monitoring ends.