With the rise of internet work-from-home jobs and freelancing, our notion of a workplace is steadily changing. Now, 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 firm of the same name established in the United States, offers its services for traditional, distant, or even completely online workplaces.
An employee monitoring software is used to monitor whether or not employees are keeping on with their duties, as well as screen and be aware of unwanted or prohibited activity. Aside from monitoring behavior, it may also be used to handle any type of workplace and make it more productive.
Monitor Productivity and Improve Coordination with HubStaff Hubstaff Difference Between Free and Basic Plan
HubStaff includes the features that you would expect from an employee tracking software such as:
Online Activity Monitoring:
All of us know full well that social media kills productivity. All too frequently, a few swipes on any social media app will end up consuming hours of our time, even in the workplace. 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 pay attention to the sites (and even the url of the exact page) that workers see during work hours, as well as the time they spend on it. Traffic from applications can also be tracked and the time spent on these can also be listed.
The data 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 allowing time slide on websites unrelated to work.
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Screen Monitoring
Monitoring 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’s impossible to manage 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 could be set to have the screenshots be partly blurred. In this way, managers can determine if employees are working in 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 look at the screenshots taken from their screens just so 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 behavior of employees as knowing that their screens 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 active to the total time spent working. HubStaff believes a productivity rate of at least 60% as a great 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 displays the productivity rate of every member of the team. This way, the tool may 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 Hubstaff Difference Between Free and Basic Plan
Working overtime is also becoming more of a norm, even so in countries such as Japan where it is an unofficial standard. Reasons can range from employees wanting to finish their jobs early, catch up on projects, and some are only workaholics who want to be working as much as you can.
However, it’s 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 regular 8 hours of work every day.
HubStaff can help managers monitor if employees are working too much hours per week. They can set the maximum time every week which employees can remain logged on for work. Following the maximum time has been reached, then the time monitoring tool stops. This way, workaholic tendencies are suppressed, and that workers will not be given the incentive to put in too much time to work and sacrifice rest and personal time.
Monitor the Location of Employees
Managers working with remote teams might find it tough to communicate and coordinate 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 workers are commuting from one place to another, or if they are 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, managers and team leaders can track the location of their 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 rapid meetings.
As this requires employees to install HubStaff on their phones, this can be seen as overly intrusive of a tool. But same as the principles on iOS and Android applications, employees will know precisely when their places are being monitored.
Project Progress Monitoring
HubStaff lets the entire team 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 their completed and uncompleted tasks. The dashboard also shows whether employees are online.
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Payroll, Timesheets, and other Miscellaneous Features Hubstaff Difference Between Free and Basic Plan
Besides tracking 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 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 employee.
Managers can also pause the machine manually for breaks.
With HubStaff, maintaining a list of working hours and salaries is also made simpler. HubStaff’s citizenship handling tool can determine each employee’s payout based 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 Hubstaff Difference Between Free and Basic Plan
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 including clients into the members tab. From there, they could see the phases of the project, as well as the pending and completed tasks.
Third party Applications Integration
HubStaff can integrate nicely with other project monitoring tools such as but not limited to Asana and Trello. This is great news for business owners that are already using other project management applications.
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Employee Spying?
You might be wondering if using HubStaff to handle employees can be counterproductive since it might make a feeling of distrust between managers and staff 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 actions are monitored only during work hours, and exactly how they are being tracked.
However, as a company owner or manager, it is your responsibility to let your employees 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 and not a surveillance system. Employees can be sure that only the cases of their keystrokes and mouse activity are listed, rather than the actual keystroke that they register. HubStaff won’t let managers and admins know what exactly their employees 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 features associated with payroll management. The enterprise feature comprises fleet tracking and even a concierge accounts.
For those people 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 Hubstaff Difference Between Free and Basic Plan
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 intuitive and clean, and isn’t at all confusing, requiring only minimal orientation for workers not familiar with the software.
However, it must be stated 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 the majority 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 at the top of a reading assignment in reality
Business owners should also not completely depend on the data that HubStaff collects to ascertain if their employees are being productive or not. HubStaff is simply a project management software using tools and features that can help you gauge the performance of employees and other members of the team. 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 Hubstaff Difference Between Free and Basic Plan
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 plans 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 website. However, these are just based on United States laws. It’s wise 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 does not collect any data once monitoring ends.