With the rise of internet work-from-home jobs and freelancing, our notion of a workplace is steadily changing. Now, our notion of a traditional workplace can be different from the rooms filled with 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 conventional, remote, or even entirely online offices.
An employee monitoring software is used to track whether or not employees are keeping on with their duties, in addition to 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 Use Hubstaff Tracker
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 often, a few swipes on any social networking app will end up consuming hours of our time, even at work. Assessing on important notifications from time to time is acceptable, but it’s helpful if managers know when it is becoming a problem. HubStaff can help track if employees use too much social media and other programs that hamper productivity.
HubStaff can pay attention to the websites (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 can also be monitored and the time spent on these can also be recorded.
The information is displayed neatly, and supervisors can see the page name of the visited webpages, the url, and the time spent, all in a single glance. They can also go to the links displayed to confirm if employees really are allowing 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 necessary 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 their 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 can be set to have the screenshots be partly blurred. In this way, managers can determine if employees are working in 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 displays. Employees would also be able to look at the screenshots taken from their screens just so that 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 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 total time where the mouse or keyboard is active to the total 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 an employee is doing too slowly.
The dashboard for this tool displays the productivity rate of each member of the team. 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 to Use Hubstaff Tracker
Working overtime is also becoming more of a standard, even so in countries such as Japan where it is an unofficial standard. Reasons can range from employees wanting to complete their jobs early, catch up on jobs, and some are just workaholics who want to be working as much as possible.
However, it has been proven that too much work could be detrimental as creativity and productivity declines without enough rest. There is a great reason why there is a standard 8 hours of work each day.
HubStaff can help managers monitor if workers are working a lot of hours each week. They can set the maximum time every week that 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 personal and rest time.
Monitor the Location of Employees
Managers working with remote teams might find it tough to communicate and organize the team. Some employees may be leaping from place to place for work, and also be working from cafes or other workstations.
Setting up unplanned meetings can be hard if employees are commuting from 1 place to another, or if they’re doing field work.
Members of the team can install HubStaff on their telephones so that the employee location monitoring feature can be utilized. 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 long 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 on their phones, this can be seen as too intrusive of a tool. But same as the principles on iOS and Android programs, employees will know precisely 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 each job on a weekly basis. On the team dashboard, managers can view 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 Use Hubstaff Tracker
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 businesses. 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 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 simple. Money transfers for payroll can even be automatically set to weekly, monthly, or on a set period.
Job Tracking for Clients How to Use Hubstaff Tracker
Becoming transparent to clients is key for establishing trust for your business. 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 take a peek into the progress of jobs. This can be simply accomplished by adding clients into the members tab. From there, they could see the stages of the project, in addition to the pending and completed tasks.
Third party Software Integration
HubStaff can integrate nicely with other project monitoring tools such as but not limited to Asana and Trello. This is good 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 since it may make a feeling 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 exactly how they’re being tracked.
However, as a business owner or manager, it’s your responsibility to let your workers know beforehand that your workplace 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 monitoring system.
To put it simply, HubStaff is a tracking system rather than a surveillance system. Employees can be sure that only the instances of their keystrokes and mouse activity are listed, and not 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 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 associated with payroll administration. The enterprise feature comprises fleet monitoring and even a concierge accounts.
For those people who are ready 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 How to Use Hubstaff Tracker
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 isn’t in any way confusing, requiring only minimal orientation for workers not familiar with the software.
However, it has to be said that not all businesses might benefit fully from using HubStaff. HubStaff is specially suited to contemporary desk tasks, and for projects where staff members use computers for most of their time. Take jobs that take a 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 depend on the information 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 can allow you to gauge the performance of employees 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.
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FAQ How to Use Hubstaff Tracker
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 may use HubStaff?
A: The paid plans have a minimum of two users and limit of 350 users.
Q: Is implementing HubStaff in companies 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’s wise to consult with a lawyer for international users.
Q: Can employees choose when they’re being tracked?
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.