With the rise of online work-from-home jobs and freelancing, our concept of a workplace is steadily changing. Today, 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 company of the same name based 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 responsibilities, in addition to screen and be aware of unwanted or illegal activity. Aside 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 Same as Upwork?
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 media app will end up consuming hours of our time, even in the workplace. Checking up 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 employees use too much social media and other programs that hamper productivity.
HubStaff can take note of the sites (and even the url of the specific page) that workers visit during work hours, as well as the time they spend on it. Traffic from applications may also be monitored and the time spent on these can also be recorded.
The data is displayed neatly, and supervisors can see the page title of the visited pages, the url, and the time spent, all in one glance. They can also go to the links displayed to confirm if employees really are letting time slide on sites unrelated to work.
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Screen Monitoring
Monitoring individual screens is too much of a hassle and can be quite awkward if done personally. But then, it’s 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 the 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. This way, managers can determine if employees are working on their desks rather than playing games or watching movies, without exposing possible sensitive information.
It should be noted that employees would understand 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 ensured that this feature is implemented just for reasons related to work.
With that said, this still has an effect on the behaviour 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 discover 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 overall time spent working. HubStaff considers a productivity rate of at least 60% as a good sign. Productivity rates of less than 60% can 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 shows the productivity rate of each member of the group. In this way, the tool may also be used to see how many members of this team are working on a project at a given time.
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Work Limit Monitoring Hubstaff Same as Upwork?
Working overtime is also becoming more of a standard, even so in countries like Japan where it’s 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 working as much as possible.
However, it has been proven that too much work can be detrimental as productivity and creativity declines without enough rest. There is a great reason why there is a regular 8 hours of work every day.
HubStaff can help managers monitor if employees are working a lot of hours each week. They could set the maximum time each week that workers 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 suppressed, 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 Workers
Managers working with remote teams may find it hard 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 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 monitor 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 requires employees to install HubStaff in their phones, this may be seen as overly intrusive of a tool. But same as the principles on iOS and Android programs, employees will know exactly when their places are being tracked.
Project Progress Monitoring
HubStaff lets the whole group report on the progress of their tasks. HubStaff can then use this to provide a report on the status of each project 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 Same as Upwork?
Besides tracking 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 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 worker.
Managers can also pause the system manually for breaks.
With HubStaff, keeping a record of working hours and salaries 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 interval.
Job Tracking for Customers Hubstaff Same as Upwork?
Becoming transparent to clients 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 have 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 Applications Integration
HubStaff can integrate nicely with other project monitoring tools including but not limited to Asana and Trello. This is good news for business owners who 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 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’re being tracked.
However, as a business owner or manager, it is your responsibility to let your employees know beforehand that your office 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 certain that only the cases of their keystrokes and mouse activity are listed, and not the actual keystroke that they register. HubStaff will not let managers and admins know what exactly their workers 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 associated with payroll management. The enterprise feature comprises fleet monitoring and even a concierge accounts.
For those people who are ready to pay on an annual basis, then the price per person per month of their paid plans will be slashed down to $5, 8$, and $16, respectively.
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Verdict Hubstaff Same as Upwork?
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 do the job that it promises 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 stated that not all businesses might benefit fully from using HubStaff. HubStaff is specially suited to modern desk tasks, and for projects where staff members use computers for most of their time. Take jobs that take a whole lot of reading for example, 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 fact
Business owners should also not completely rely on the data that HubStaff collects to ascertain whether their employees are being productive or not. HubStaff is simply a project management software using features and tools that can allow you to gauge the performance of employees and other members of the group. 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 Same as Upwork?
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 programs have a minimum of two users and limit of 350 users.
Q: Why is implementing HubStaff in companies completely legal?
A: HubStaff has complete legal permissions for use, and resources regarding them are available on their site. But these are just based on United States laws. It is wise to check with a lawyer for international users.
Q: Can employees choose when they’re being tracked?
A: Yes, employees can manually start and end HubStaff monitoring and have it run in the background. HubStaff doesn’t collect any data once tracking ends.