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 company of the same name based in the United States, offers its services for traditional, distant, or even entirely online workplaces.
An employee tracking software is used to monitor 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 behaviour, it may also be used to handle any type of workplace and make it more productive.
Monitor Productivity and Improve Coordination with HubStaff Hubstaff Desktop App
HubStaff includes the features that you would expect from an employee monitoring software such as:
Online Activity Monitoring:
All of us know full well that social media kills productivity. All too often, a few swipes on any social media app will wind up consuming hours of our time, even at work. 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 track 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 see during work hours, as well as the time they spend on it. Traffic from applications may also be tracked and the time spent on them can also be recorded.
The information is displayed neatly, and supervisors can see the page name of the visited pages, 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 sites unrelated to work.
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Screen Monitoring
Tracking individual displays 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 is impossible to handle employees in person.
HubStaff has a feature that could enable managers to take screenshots of the employees’ screens at a customizable time interval, with 10 minutes as the default. If it sounds too much of an invasion of privacy, then it can be set to have the screenshots be partly 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 should be noted that workers would understand that this feature is activated on their displays. Employees would also have the ability to look at the screenshots taken from their displays just so that they’ll be assured 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 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 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% may mean that a worker is taking too much time on the desk doing nothing, or if an employee is doing too slowly.
The dashboard for this tool shows the productivity rate of every member of the group. In this way, the tool may 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 Hubstaff Desktop App
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 complete their tasks early, catch up on jobs, and some are only workaholics who wish to be working as much as you can.
However, it has been demonstrated that too much work can be detrimental as creativity and productivity declines without enough rest. There’s a great reason why there is a regular 8 hours of work each day.
HubStaff can help managers track if workers are working too much hours each week. They could set the maximum time every week which workers can stay logged on for work. After the maximum time has been reached, then the time monitoring tool stops. In this manner, 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 may find it hard to communicate and organize the team. Some employees might be leaping 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 1 place to another, or if they are doing field work.
Members of the group can install HubStaff in their smartphones so that the employee location monitoring feature can be utilized. 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 long 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 on 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 monitored.
Project Progress Monitoring
HubStaff lets the whole 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 see each individual employee’s working hours and a summary of the completed and uncompleted tasks. The dashboard also shows whether workers are online.
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Payroll, Timesheets, and other Miscellaneous Features Hubstaff Desktop App
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 be a virtual check-in and check-out mechanism for companies. And, better than traditional systems where timesheets can be cheated, the HubStaff timesheet tool can capture the first keyboard stroke or mouse activity of the day for each employee.
Managers can also pause the machine 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 simple. Money transfers for payroll can even be automatically set to weekly, monthly, or on a set period.
Project Tracking for Clients Hubstaff Desktop App
Becoming 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 easy 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 could see the stages of the project, as well as 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 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 as it might 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 make certain that their activities are monitored only during work hours, and exactly how they’re being monitored.
However, as a business owner or manager, it is your duty to let your employees 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 and not 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 what exactly 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.
Only the Premium and Enterprise plans unlock features related to payroll management. The enterprise feature comprises fleet monitoring and even a concierge accounts.
For those 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 Hubstaff Desktop App
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 claims to do. The user interface is clean and intuitive, and isn’t at all 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 especially suited to contemporary desk jobs, and for projects where team members use computers for most of their time. Take jobs that require 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 on top of a reading assignment in fact
Business owners should also not completely depend on the information 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 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 Hubstaff Desktop App
Q: Where do the screenshots go?
A: HubStaff shops the screenshots and other data using Amazon AWS.
Q: Is there a maximum number of team members that can use HubStaff?
A: The paid plans have a minimum of 2 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. But 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 are being tracked?
A: Yes, employees can manually start and end HubStaff tracking and have it run in the background. HubStaff does not collect any data once tracking ends.