With the rise of online work-from-home jobs and freelancing, our notion of a workplace is steadily changing. Now, our notion of a conventional 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, remote, or even entirely 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 look out for unwanted or illegal activity. Aside from monitoring behaviour, it may also be used to manage any type of workplace and make it more productive.
Monitor Productivity and Improve Coordination with HubStaff Hubstaff Free Competitors
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 wind 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 managers know when it’s becoming a problem. HubStaff can help track if workers use too much social media and other programs that hamper productivity.
HubStaff can take note of the sites (and even the url of the exact page) that employees visit during work hours, in addition to the time they spend on it. Traffic from applications may also be monitored and the time spent on them is also recorded.
The information is displayed neatly, and managers 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 workers really are allowing 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 manage employees in person.
HubStaff has a quality that could enable managers to take screenshots of the employees’ screens at a customizable time interval, 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. 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 workers would understand that this feature is activated on their displays. Employees would also be able to view the screenshots taken from their displays just so that they’ll be ensured that this feature is implemented just 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 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 overall time where 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% 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 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 Free Competitors
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 jobs early, catch up on jobs, and some are only workaholics who want 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 is a good reason why there’s a regular 8 hours of work every day.
HubStaff can help managers track if workers are working too much hours each week. They can set the maximum time each 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 curbed, and that employees will not be given the incentive to put in too much time to work and sacrifice rest and personal time.
Monitor the Location of Workers
Managers working with remote teams may find it tough to communicate and organize the team. Some employees may be leaping from place to place for work, and even 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 team can install HubStaff on their telephones so that the employee place monitoring feature can be utilized. With this, supervisors 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 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 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 team report on the progress of their tasks. HubStaff can then use this to offer a report on the status of every job on a weekly basis. On the staff dashboard, managers can view each individual employee’s working hours and a summary of their completed and uncompleted tasks. The dashboard also displays whether employees are online.
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Payroll, Timesheets, and other Miscellaneous Features Hubstaff Free Competitors
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 be a virtual 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 action of the day for each employee.
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 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 Free Competitors
Being transparent to customers is key for establishing trust for your business. HubStaff makes it easy 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 stages of the project, as well as the pending and completed tasks.
Third party Applications 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 software.
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Employee Spying?
You might be wondering if using HubStaff to handle employees can be counterproductive as it may make a feeling of distrust between managers and team members. To ease your mind, you can be certain that HubStaff lets the whole team know of the entire monitoring system. Employees can make certain that their activities are monitored only during work hours, and precisely how they are being tracked.
However, as a company owner or manager, it’s your responsibility 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 rather than a surveillance system. Employees can be sure that only the cases of their keystrokes and mouse actions are listed, rather than the actual keystroke that they register. HubStaff will not let managers and admins know just what 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.
Just the Premium and Enterprise plans unlock features associated with payroll management. The enterprise feature includes fleet monitoring and even a concierge account.
For those who are willing to pay on an annual basis, then the price per person per month of the paid programs will be slashed down to $5, 8$, and $16, respectively.
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Verdict Hubstaff Free Competitors
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 is not in any way confusing, requiring only minimal orientation for employees not knowledgeable about the software.
However, it has to be stated that not all companies might benefit fully from utilizing HubStaff. HubStaff is specially suited to modern 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 appear 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 determine if their employees are being productive or not. HubStaff is simply a project management software using tools and features that will 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 Free Competitors
Q: Where do the screenshots go?
A: HubStaff stores the screenshots and other data using Amazon AWS.
Q: Is there a maximum number of group members who can use HubStaff?
A: The paid programs 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 can be found on their website. However, these are only 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 tracking and have it run in the background. HubStaff does not collect any data once tracking ends.