With the rise of internet work-from-home jobs and freelancing, our concept of a workplace is steadily changing. Today, our concept of a traditional 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 conventional, distant, or even entirely online workplaces.
An employee monitoring software is used to monitor whether or not employees are keeping on with their responsibilities, as well as screen and be aware of unwanted or prohibited activity. Apart from monitoring behavior, it can also be used to manage any sort of workplace and make it more productive.
Monitor Productivity and Improve Coordination with HubStaff How to Add Tasks to Projects in Hubstaff
HubStaff includes the features that you would expect from an employee tracking 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 networking 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 is 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 employees 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 these can also be recorded.
The information is displayed neatly, and managers can see the page title of the visited webpages, the url, and the time spent, all in one glance. They can also visit the links displayed to confirm if workers really are letting time slide on websites unrelated to work.
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Screen Monitoring
Tracking 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 quality that can enable managers to take screenshots of the employees’ screens at a customizable time period, 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 partly blurred. In 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 should be noted that workers would know that this feature is activated on their screens. Employees would also be able to look at the screenshots taken from their displays just so that they’ll be ensured that this feature is implemented just for reasons related to work.
That said, this still has an effect on the behaviour 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 step 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 active 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 indicate 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 displays the productivity rate of each member of the group. In this way, the tool can also be used to see how many members of the team are working on a project at a specified time.
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Work Limit Monitoring How to Add Tasks to Projects in Hubstaff
Working overtime is also becoming more of a standard, 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 jobs, and some are only workaholics who want to be working as much as possible.
However, it has been proven that too much work could be detrimental as productivity and creativity declines without enough rest. There’s a good reason why there’s a standard 8 hours of work every day.
HubStaff can help managers track if workers are working a lot of hours per week. They can set the maximum time each 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 may be jumping 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 1 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 utilized. 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 long 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 overly intrusive of a tool. However, same as the rules on iOS and Android programs, employees will know precisely when their locations are being tracked.
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 each job on a weekly basis. On the staff dashboard, managers can see each individual employee’s working hours and a summary of the completed and uncompleted tasks. The dashboard also displays whether workers are online.
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Payroll, Timesheets, and other Miscellaneous Features How to Add Tasks to Projects in Hubstaff
Aside from 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 virtual check-in and check-out mechanism for companies. And, better than conventional systems where timesheets can be cheated, the HubStaff timesheet tool can capture 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 record of working hours and salaries is also made easier. 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 simple. Money transfers for payroll can even be automatically set to weekly, monthly, or on a set interval.
Job Tracking for Customers How to Add Tasks to Projects in Hubstaff
Being transparent to customers is key for establishing trust for your company. HubStaff makes it effortless to communicate with clients, as well as assure them that things are going as agreed upon.
HubStaff makes it simple for clients to have a peek into the progress of jobs. This can be simply done by adding clients into the members tab. From there, they can see the phases of the project, as well as the pending and completed tasks.
Third party Applications Integration
HubStaff can integrate well with other project monitoring 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 may be asking yourself if using HubStaff to handle employees can be counterproductive as it may 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 whole monitoring system. Employees can be sure 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 duty to let your workers 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 rather than a surveillance system. Employees can be certain that only the instances of their keystrokes and mouse actions are recorded, rather than the actual keystroke that they register. HubStaff won’t let managers and admins know just what their workers 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 $10, 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 monitoring and even a concierge account.
For those who are ready 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 How to Add Tasks to Projects in 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 employees not familiar with the software.
However, it must be said that not all companies might benefit fully from utilizing HubStaff. HubStaff is specially suited to contemporary desk jobs, and for projects where team members use computers for most of their time. Take jobs that require 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 on top of a reading assignment in reality
Business owners should also not completely depend on the information that HubStaff collects to ascertain if 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 employees and other members of the team. This is certainly not 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 How to Add Tasks to Projects in Hubstaff
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 can use HubStaff?
A: The paid programs have a minimum of two users and cap 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 website. However, these are only based on United States laws. It is wise to check with a lawyer for international users.
Q: Can employees choose when they’re 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.