With the rise of internet work-from-home jobs and freelancing, our notion of a workplace is steadily changing. Today, our notion of a conventional workplace can differ from the rooms full of individual cubicles that we were used to. HubStaff, a software from a company of the same name established in the United States, offers its services for conventional, distant, or even entirely online offices.
An employee tracking software is used to track whether or not employees are keeping on with their responsibilities, as well as screen and be aware of unwanted or illegal activity. Aside 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 Hubstaff Employee Handbook
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 frequently, a few swipes on any social networking app is going to end up consuming hours of our time, even at work. Checking up on important notifications from time to time is acceptable, but it’s helpful if supervisors know when it’s becoming a problem. HubStaff can help monitor if employees use too much social media and other applications that hamper productivity.
HubStaff can take note of the sites (and even the url of the exact page) that employees 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 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 verify if employees really are letting time slide on websites 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 necessary for when a remote workplace setup is in order where it is impossible to handle employees in person.
HubStaff has a feature 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 could be set to have the screenshots be partially blurred. This way, managers can determine if workers are working on their desks instead of 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 look at the screenshots taken from their displays just so they’ll be ensured that this feature is implemented just for reasons related to work.
That said, this still has an influence 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 discover times of inactivity where none of these instances are found.
HubStaff can then compare the overall time in which the mouse or keyboard is active to the overall time spent working. HubStaff believes a productivity rate of at least 60% as a great sign. Productivity rates of less than 60% can indicate 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 shows 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 specified time.
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Work Limit Monitoring Hubstaff Employee Handbook
Working overtime is also becoming more of a standard, even so in countries such as Japan where it is an unofficial standard. Reasons can vary from employees wanting to complete their tasks early, catch up on projects, and some are just workaholics who want to be working as much as possible.
However, it’s been proven that too much work could be harmful as productivity and creativity declines without enough rest. There is a great reason why there is a regular 8 hours of work each day.
HubStaff can help managers monitor if workers are working a lot of hours per week. They can set the maximum time every week that workers can stay 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 won’t be given the incentive to put in too much time to work and sacrifice personal and rest 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 also be working from cafes or other workstations.
Setting up unplanned meetings can be difficult if employees are commuting from 1 place to another, or if they are doing field work.
Members of the group can install HubStaff in their telephones so that the employee place monitoring feature can be utilized. 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 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 may be seen as too intrusive of a tool. But same as the principles 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 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 displays whether workers are online.
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Payroll, Timesheets, and other Miscellaneous Features Hubstaff Employee Handbook
Aside from 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 function as a digital check-in and check-out mechanism for businesses. 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 worker.
Managers can also pause the machine manually for breaks.
With HubStaff, maintaining a list of working hours and wages is also made simpler. HubStaff’s payroll managing 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 Clients Hubstaff Employee Handbook
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 easy for clients to take a peek into the progress of projects. This can be simply accomplished 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 Software Integration
HubStaff can integrate nicely with other project tracking tools including 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 manage employees can be counterproductive since it may make an atmosphere of distrust between managers and staff members. To ease your mind, you can be certain that HubStaff lets the entire team know of the entire monitoring system. Employees can be sure that their actions are monitored only during work hours, and exactly how they are being tracked.
However, as a business 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 monitoring system rather than a surveillance system. Employees can be certain that only the cases of their keystrokes and mouse activity are recorded, 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 plans 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.
Only the Premium and Enterprise plans unlock attributes associated with payroll management. The enterprise feature comprises fleet tracking and even a concierge accounts.
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 Hubstaff Employee Handbook
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 intuitive and clean, and isn’t at all 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 specially suited to contemporary desk tasks, 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 appear 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 rely on the information that HubStaff collects to determine 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 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 Employee Handbook
Q: Where do the screenshots go?
A: HubStaff stores the screenshots and other information using Amazon AWS.
Q: Is there a maximum number of group members who may use HubStaff?
A: The paid plans have a minimum of 2 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 only based on United States laws. It is best 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 tracking and have it run in the background. HubStaff does not collect any data once monitoring ends.