With the rise of online work-from-home jobs and freelancing, our notion of a workplace is steadily changing. Now, our concept of a conventional 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 entirely online offices.
An employee monitoring software is used to track whether or not employees are keeping on with their responsibilities, in addition to screen and be aware of unwanted or prohibited activity. Apart from monitoring behaviour, it can also be used to handle any sort of workplace and make it more productive.
Monitor Productivity and Improve Coordination with HubStaff How Does Hubstaff Integrate With Podio
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 media app is going to end up consuming hours of our time, even at work. Assessing on important notifications from time to time is acceptable, but it is helpful if supervisors 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 exact page) that workers see during work hours, in addition to the time they spend on it. Traffic from applications can also be tracked and the time spent on them is also listed.
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 visit the links displayed to confirm if employees really are letting 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 is impossible to handle employees in person.
HubStaff has a quality that could enable managers to take screenshots of the employees’ screens at a customizable time period, with 10 minutes as the default option. 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 on their desks rather than playing games or watching movies, without exposing possible sensitive information.
It should be noted that employees would know that this feature is activated on their displays. Employees would also be able to view the screenshots taken from their screens just so they’ll be assured 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 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 those instances are present.
HubStaff can then compare the overall time where the mouse or keyboard is busy to the overall time spent working. HubStaff considers a productivity rate of at least 60% as a good sign. Productivity rates of less than 60% can mean that a worker 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 group. 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 How Does Hubstaff Integrate With Podio
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 jobs early, catch up on jobs, and some are only workaholics who wish to be running as much as possible.
However, it’s been proven that too much work can be detrimental as creativity and productivity declines without enough rest. There’s a good reason why there is a standard 8 hours of work each day.
HubStaff can help managers monitor if workers are working too much hours per week. They could set the maximum time each week which employees 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 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 may find it hard to communicate and organize 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 1 place to another, or if they’re doing field work.
Members of the group can install HubStaff on their telephones so that the employee location monitoring feature can be used. With this, supervisors and team leaders can monitor the location of their members during work hours.
HubStaff can display how much time employees spend on commuting between places and how much time is spent on each location. From these data, managers can determine the best time to do rapid meetings.
As this needs employees to install HubStaff in their phones, this may be seen as overly intrusive of a tool. But same as the rules on iOS and Android applications, employees will know exactly when their places 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 project on a weekly basis. On the team dashboard, managers can view 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 How Does Hubstaff Integrate With Podio
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 be a virtual 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 activity of the day for each employee.
Managers can also pause the system manually for breaks.
With HubStaff, maintaining a record of working hours and salaries is also made simpler. 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 simple. Money transfers for payroll can even be automatically set to weekly, monthly, or on a set interval.
Job Tracking for Customers How Does Hubstaff Integrate With Podio
Becoming transparent to clients is key for establishing trust for your company. HubStaff makes it easy to communicate with clients, in addition to 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 can see the stages of the project, as well as the completed and pending tasks.
Third party Software Integration
HubStaff can integrate nicely 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 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 sure that HubStaff lets the entire team know of the entire monitoring system. Employees can make certain that their activities are monitored only during work hours, and precisely how they are being monitored.
However, as a company 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 monitoring system.
To put it simply, HubStaff is a tracking system and not a surveillance system. Employees can be certain that only the cases of their keystrokes and mouse actions are recorded, rather than 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 $7, while the Premium and Enterprise plans cost $10 and $20 respectively.
Just the Premium and Enterprise plans unlock attributes related to payroll administration. The enterprise feature comprises fleet tracking and even a concierge account.
For those who are willing to pay on an annual basis, then the cost per person per month of the paid plans will be slashed down to $5, 8$, and $16, respectively.
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Verdict How Does Hubstaff Integrate With Podio
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 perform the job that it claims to do. The user interface is clean and intuitive, and is not in any way confusing, requiring only minimal orientation for employees not familiar with the software.
However, it must be stated that not all companies might benefit fully from using 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 whole 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 rely on the data that HubStaff collects to ascertain if their employees are being productive or not. HubStaff is merely a project management software using tools and features that will help you gauge the performance of employees 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 How Does Hubstaff Integrate With Podio
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 that can 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 can be found 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 tracking and have it run in the background. HubStaff doesn’t collect any data once monitoring ends.