With the rise of internet work-from-home jobs and freelancing, our concept of a workplace is steadily changing. Now, our notion of a conventional workplace can be different from the rooms filled with 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, remote, or even completely online workplaces.
An employee monitoring software is used to monitor whether or not employees are keeping on with their responsibilities, in addition to screen and look out for unwanted or prohibited activity. Apart from monitoring behaviour, it may also be used to manage any sort of workplace and make it more productive.
Monitor Productivity and Improve Coordination with HubStaff Hubstaff Google Extension
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 is going to end up consuming hours of our time, even at work. Assessing 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 monitor if workers use an excessive amount of social media and other applications that hamper productivity.
HubStaff can pay attention to the websites (and even the url of the specific page) that employees see during work hours, in addition to 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 managers can see the page name of the visited webpages, the url, and the time spent, all in one glance. They can also visit the links displayed to verify if workers 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 quite 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 period, 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. This way, managers can determine if workers are working on their desks rather than playing games or watching movies, without exposing possible sensitive information.
It should be noted that workers would know 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 influence on the behaviour of employees as knowing that their displays are tracked 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 step of employee activity. HubStaff can detect keyboard strokes and mouse interaction and discover times of inactivity where none of those instances are present.
HubStaff can then compare the overall 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 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 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 given time.
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Work Limit Monitoring Hubstaff Google Extension
Working overtime is also becoming more of a norm, even so in countries like Japan where it is an unofficial standard. Reasons can vary from employees wanting to finish their jobs early, catch up on projects, and some are only workaholics who wish to be running as much as you can.
However, it has been demonstrated that too much work could be detrimental as productivity and creativity 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 employees are working too much hours each week. They could set the maximum time each week which workers can remain logged on for work. Following the maximum time has been reached, then the time monitoring tool stops. In this manner, workaholic tendencies are curbed, and that employees won’t be given the incentive to put in a lot of 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 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 hard if employees are commuting from one place to another, or if they are doing field work.
Members of the team can install HubStaff in their telephones so that the employee place monitoring feature can be used. 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 much time is spent on each location. From these data, managers can determine the best time to do quick meetings.
As this needs employees to install HubStaff in 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 precisely when their locations are being tracked.
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 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 employees are online.
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Payroll, Timesheets, and other Miscellaneous Features Hubstaff Google Extension
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 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 very first keyboard stroke or mouse action of the day for each worker.
Managers can also pause the system manually for breaks.
With HubStaff, keeping a record of working hours and salaries is also made easier. 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 simple. Money transfers for payroll can even be automatically set to weekly, monthly, or on a set interval.
Project Tracking for Clients Hubstaff Google Extension
Being transparent to clients is key for establishing trust for your company. HubStaff makes it effortless to communicate with customers, as well as assure them that things are moving as agreed upon.
HubStaff makes it simple 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 can see the stages of the project, as well as the pending and completed 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 great news for business owners who are already using other project management software.
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Employee Spying?
You may be asking yourself if using HubStaff to handle employees can be counterproductive as it might make a feeling of distrust between managers and team members. To ease your mind, you can be sure that HubStaff lets the whole 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 business owner or manager, it is 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 tracking system and not a surveillance system. Employees can be sure that only the instances of the keystrokes and mouse activity are recorded, rather than the actual keystroke that they register. HubStaff won’t let managers and admins know just what 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 $7, 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 includes fleet tracking and even a concierge accounts.
For those 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 Hubstaff Google Extension
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 employees not familiar with the software.
However, it must be said that not all businesses might benefit fully from using HubStaff. HubStaff is especially suited to modern desk tasks, and for projects where staff members use computers for most of their time. Take jobs that require a lot of reading for example, 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 rely on the information that HubStaff collects to ascertain whether their employees are being productive or not. HubStaff is simply a project management software using tools and features that can 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 Google Extension
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 that may 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 are available on their website. But these are only based on United States laws. It’s best to check with a lawyer for international users.
Q: Can employees choose when they’re being monitored?
A: Yes, employees can manually start and end HubStaff monitoring and have it run in the background. HubStaff doesn’t collect any data once monitoring ends.