With the rise of online work-from-home jobs and freelancing, our concept of a workplace is steadily changing. Now, our concept of a conventional workplace can differ from the rooms filled with individual cubicles that we were used to. HubStaff, a software from a firm of the same name based in the United States, offers its services for traditional, distant, or even entirely online offices.
An employee tracking 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. Apart from monitoring behavior, it can also be used to handle any sort of workplace and make it more productive.
Monitor Productivity and Improve Coordination with HubStaff Hubstaff Invasion of Privacy
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 media app will 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 managers know when it is becoming a problem. HubStaff can help track if employees use too much social media and other applications that hamper productivity.
HubStaff can pay attention to the sites (and even the url of the exact page) that employees see during work hours, as well as the time they spend on it. Traffic from applications may also be monitored and the time spent on them is also recorded.
The data 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 go to the links displayed to confirm if employees really are allowing time slide on sites unrelated to work.
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Screen Monitoring
Tracking individual screens is too much of a hassle and can be very awkward if done personally. But then, it is necessary for when a remote workplace setup is in order where it is impossible to manage employees in person.
HubStaff has a quality 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 partly blurred. In 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 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 assured that this feature is implemented just for reasons related to work.
With that said, this still has an influence 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 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 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 a worker is doing too slowly.
The dashboard for this tool displays the productivity rate of every member of the group. 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 Invasion of Privacy
Working overtime is also becoming more of a norm, even so in countries like Japan where it is an unofficial standard. Reasons can range from employees wanting to finish their jobs early, catch up on jobs, and some are just workaholics who want to be running as much as you can.
However, it’s been proven that too much work can be detrimental as creativity and productivity declines without enough rest. There is a good reason why there’s a standard 8 hours of work every day.
HubStaff can help managers track if employees are working too much hours per week. They could set the maximum time every week which employees can remain 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 rest and personal time.
Monitor the Location of Employees
Managers working with remote teams may find it hard 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 difficult if workers are commuting from one place to another, or if they’re doing field work.
Members of the group can install HubStaff on their smartphones so that the employee place monitoring feature can be used. 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 places 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 may be seen as too intrusive of a tool. However, same as the principles on iOS and Android programs, employees will know exactly when their locations are being monitored.
Project Progress Monitoring
HubStaff lets the whole team report on the progress of their tasks. HubStaff can then use this to provide a report on the status of every project on a weekly basis. On the staff 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 Invasion of Privacy
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 conventional systems where timesheets can be cheated, the HubStaff timesheet tool can record the first keyboard stroke or mouse action of the day for each employee.
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 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 easy. Cash transfers for payroll can even be automatically set to weekly, monthly, or on a set interval.
Job Tracking for Clients Hubstaff Invasion of Privacy
Becoming transparent to clients is key for establishing trust for your company. HubStaff makes it effortless to communicate with clients, in addition to assure them that things are moving as agreed upon.
HubStaff makes it easy for clients to take a peek into the progress of projects. This can be simply accomplished by including clients into the members tab. From there, they can see the stages of the project, as well as the completed and pending 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 software.
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Employee Spying?
You may be asking yourself if using HubStaff to handle employees can be counterproductive as it may make a feeling of distrust between managers and staff 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 actions are monitored only during work hours, and precisely how they are being tracked.
However, as a business owner or manager, it’s 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 tracking system.
To put it simply, HubStaff is a tracking system rather than a surveillance system. Employees can be sure that only the cases 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 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.
Just the Premium and Enterprise plans unlock features related to payroll management. The enterprise feature comprises fleet tracking and even a concierge account.
For those people who are willing 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 Invasion of Privacy
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 sure that HubStaff can flawlessly perform 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 employees not familiar with the software.
However, it has to be said that not all companies might benefit fully from utilizing HubStaff. HubStaff is especially suited to modern desk tasks, and for projects where staff members use computers for the majority of their time. Take jobs that take 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 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 with features and tools 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 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 Invasion of Privacy
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 who may use HubStaff?
A: The paid programs have a minimum of two users and cap of 350 users.
Q: Is implementing HubStaff in companies 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 best to consult with a lawyer for international users.
Q: Can employees choose when they are being tracked?
A: Yes, employees can manually start and finish HubStaff tracking and have it run in the background. HubStaff doesn’t collect any data once monitoring ends.