With the rise of internet work-from-home jobs and freelancing, our notion of a workplace is steadily changing. Today, our concept of a traditional 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 established in the United States, offers its services for conventional, remote, or even completely online offices.
An employee monitoring software is used to monitor whether or not employees are keeping on with their duties, in addition to screen and look out for unwanted or prohibited 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 Does Hubstaff Allow My Employer to Access My Computer
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 frequently, a few swipes on any social media app is going to 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 managers know when it’s becoming a problem. HubStaff can help monitor if workers use an excessive amount of social media and other applications that hamper productivity.
HubStaff can take note of the sites (and even the url of the specific page) that employees visit during work hours, as well as the time they spend on it. Traffic from applications can also be tracked 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 a single glance. They can also go to the links displayed to confirm if workers really are allowing time slide on websites unrelated to work.
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Display Monitoring
Monitoring individual displays is too much of a hassle and can be very awkward if done personally. But then, it’s necessary for when a remote workplace setup is in order where it is impossible to handle employees in person.
HubStaff has a feature that could enable managers to take screenshots of their employees’ screens at a customizable time interval, with 10 minutes as the default option. If this sounds too much of an invasion of privacy, then it can be set to have the screenshots be partially blurred. This way, managers can determine if employees are working on their desks instead of playing games or watching movies, without exposing potential sensitive information.
It must be noted that employees would understand that this feature is activated on their displays. Employees would also have the ability to look at the screenshots taken from their screens just so they’ll be ensured that this feature is implemented just for reasons related to work.
With that said, this still has an effect on the behavior 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 employee activity. HubStaff can detect keyboard strokes and mouse interaction and discover times of inactivity where none of these instances are present.
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% 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 each member of the team. In this way, the tool can 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 Does Hubstaff Allow My Employer to Access My Computer
Working overtime is also becoming more of a norm, even so in countries like Japan where it’s an unofficial standard. Reasons can vary from employees wanting to finish their tasks early, catch up on jobs, and some are just workaholics who wish to be working as much as you can.
However, it has been proven that too much work could be detrimental as productivity and creativity declines without enough rest. There’s a great reason why there’s a standard 8 hours of work every day.
HubStaff can help managers monitor if workers are working a lot of hours per week. They could set the maximum time every week which employees can remain 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 workers 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 Workers
Managers working with remote teams may find it hard 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 employees are commuting from one place to another, or if they’re doing field work.
Members of the group can install HubStaff in their telephones so that the employee location 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 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 requires employees to install HubStaff in their phones, this may be seen as too intrusive of a tool. However, same as the rules on iOS and Android programs, employees will know exactly when their places are being monitored.
Project Progress Monitoring
HubStaff lets the entire team report on the progress of their tasks. HubStaff can then use this to provide a report on the status of every project 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 shows whether employees are online.
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Payroll, Timesheets, and other Miscellaneous Features Does Hubstaff Allow My Employer to Access My Computer
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 companies. And, better than conventional systems where timesheets can be cheated, the HubStaff timesheet tool can record the first keyboard stroke or mouse action of the day for each employee.
Managers can also pause the machine manually for breaks.
With HubStaff, keeping a record of working hours and salaries 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 Does Hubstaff Allow My Employer to Access My Computer
Being transparent to clients is key for establishing trust for your business. HubStaff makes it effortless 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 projects. 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 Software 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 that are already using other project management applications.
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Employee Spying?
You may be asking yourself if using HubStaff to manage employees can be counterproductive as it may 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 be sure that their activities are monitored only during work hours, and exactly how they’re being tracked.
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 actions are recorded, rather than the actual keystroke that they register. HubStaff will not let managers and admins know just what their workers 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.
Only the Premium and Enterprise plans unlock features related to payroll management. The enterprise feature includes 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 programs will be slashed down to $5, 8$, and $16, respectively.
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Verdict Does Hubstaff Allow My Employer to Access My Computer
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 claims 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 must 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 require a whole lot of reading for instance, where employees might appear 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 whether their employees are being productive or not. HubStaff is merely a project management software with tools and features that will allow you to gauge the performance of workers 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 Does Hubstaff Allow My Employer to Access My Computer
Q: Where do the screenshots go?
A: HubStaff shops the screenshots and other information using Amazon AWS.
Q: Is there a maximum number of group members who may use HubStaff?
A: The paid plans have a minimum of two users and limit of 350 users.
Q: Is implementing HubStaff in businesses completely legal?
A: HubStaff has complete legal permissions for use, and resources regarding them are available on their site. However, these are only based on United States laws. It’s wise to consult with a lawyer for international users.
Q: Can employees choose when they’re being monitored?
A: Yes, employees can manually start and end HubStaff monitoring and have it run in the background. HubStaff does not collect any data once tracking ends.