With the rise of online work-from-home jobs and freelancing, our concept of a workplace is steadily changing. Now, our concept 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, remote, or even completely online offices.
An employee tracking software is used to monitor whether or not employees are keeping on with their responsibilities, as well as screen and look out for unwanted or prohibited activity. Aside from monitoring behavior, it may also be used to manage any type of workplace and make it more productive.
Monitor Productivity and Improve Coordination with HubStaff Free Hubstaff Account
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 will 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 supervisors know when it is becoming a problem. HubStaff can help monitor if workers use too much social media and other applications that hamper productivity.
HubStaff can take note of the sites (and even the url of the specific page) that workers visit during work hours, in addition to the time they spend on it. Traffic from applications may also be tracked and the time spent on them can also be recorded.
The data is displayed neatly, and supervisors can see the page name 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
Tracking individual displays is too much of a hassle and can be quite awkward if done personally. But then, it is necessary for when a remote workplace setup is in order where it is impossible to handle employees in person.
HubStaff has a quality 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 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 possible sensitive information.
It must be noted that employees would understand that this feature is activated on their screens. Employees would also be able to view the screenshots taken from their displays just so that they’ll be ensured that this feature is implemented only for reasons related to work.
With 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 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 present.
HubStaff can then compare the total time in which the mouse or keyboard is busy to the overall time spent working. HubStaff considers 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 shows the productivity rate of every member of the group. In this way, the tool can 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 Free Hubstaff Account
Working overtime is also becoming more of a norm, even so in countries like Japan where it’s an unofficial standard. Reasons can range from employees wanting to finish their tasks early, catch up on projects, and some are only workaholics who wish to be running as much as you can.
However, it has been demonstrated that too much work could be harmful as productivity and creativity declines without enough rest. There’s a great reason why there’s a regular 8 hours of work every day.
HubStaff can help managers monitor if employees are working too much hours each week. They could set the maximum time each week that workers can stay logged on for work. Following the maximum time has been reached, then the time tracking tool stops. In this manner, workaholic tendencies are suppressed, 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 might find it tough to communicate and coordinate the team. Some employees may be jumping from place to place for work, and also be working from cafes or other workstations.
Setting up unplanned meetings can be difficult if workers are commuting from one place to another, or if they are 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 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 may be seen as too intrusive of a tool. However, same as the rules on iOS and Android applications, employees will know precisely 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 every job 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 displays whether workers are online.
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Payroll, Timesheets, and other Miscellaneous Features Free Hubstaff Account
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 traditional systems where timesheets can be cheated, the HubStaff timesheet tool can record the first keyboard stroke or mouse activity of the day for each worker.
Managers can also pause the system manually for breaks.
With HubStaff, maintaining a list of working hours and salaries is also made easier. HubStaff’s payroll managing 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. Money transfers for payroll can even be automatically set to weekly, monthly, or on a set period.
Job Tracking for Customers Free Hubstaff Account
Becoming transparent to clients is key for establishing trust for your business. HubStaff makes it effortless to communicate with customers, 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 done by including clients into the members tab. From there, they can 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 such as 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 might be wondering if using HubStaff to manage employees can be counterproductive since it might make an atmosphere of distrust between managers and team members. To ease your mind, you can be certain that HubStaff lets the whole team know of the whole monitoring system. Employees can be sure that their actions are monitored only during work hours, and precisely how they are 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. 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 tracking system and not a surveillance system. Employees can be certain that only the cases of the keystrokes and mouse activity are recorded, and not the actual keystroke that they register. HubStaff will not let managers and admins know what exactly 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 attributes related to payroll management. The enterprise feature includes fleet tracking and even a concierge accounts.
For those who are willing to pay on an annual basis, then the cost per person per month of their paid programs will be slashed down to $5, 8$, and $16, respectively.
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Verdict Free Hubstaff Account
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 certain that HubStaff can flawlessly do 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 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 the majority 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 data that HubStaff collects to ascertain 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 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 Free Hubstaff Account
Q: Where do the screenshots go?
A: HubStaff stores the screenshots and other data using Amazon AWS.
Q: Is there a maximum number of team members that may use HubStaff?
A: The paid programs have a minimum of 2 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. But 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 finish HubStaff monitoring and have it run in the background. HubStaff doesn’t collect any data once tracking ends.