With the rise of online 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 traditional, distant, or even completely online workplaces.
An employee tracking software is used to monitor whether or not employees are keeping on with their duties, in addition to screen and be aware of unwanted or illegal activity. Apart from monitoring behavior, it may also be used to manage any sort of workplace and make it more productive.
Monitor Productivity and Improve Coordination with HubStaff Hubstaff User Manual
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 frequently, a few swipes on any social media 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 managers know when it is becoming a problem. HubStaff can help monitor 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 can also be monitored and the time spent on them can also be recorded.
The data is displayed neatly, and managers can see the page title of the visited pages, the url, and the time spent, all in a single 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
Monitoring individual displays 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 handle 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 this 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 workers are working in their desks instead of playing games or watching movies, without exposing possible sensitive information.
It must be noted that employees would know that this feature is activated on their displays. Employees would also have the ability to view the screenshots taken from their screens just so that they’ll be ensured that this feature is implemented only for reasons related to work.
With that said, this still has an effect on the behavior 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 measure of worker activity. HubStaff can detect keyboard strokes and mouse interaction and detect times of inactivity where none of those instances are present.
HubStaff can then compare the total time in which the mouse or keyboard is busy 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 indicate 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 every member of the team. In 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 User Manual
Working overtime is also becoming more of a norm, even so in countries such as Japan where it’s an unofficial standard. Reasons can vary from employees wanting to complete their jobs early, catch up on jobs, and some are only workaholics who wish to be working as much as possible.
However, it has been demonstrated that too much work could be detrimental as creativity and productivity declines without enough rest. There’s a good reason why there is a regular 8 hours of work every day.
HubStaff can help managers monitor if workers are working a lot of hours each week. They could set the maximum time each week that employees can stay 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 employees won’t be given the incentive to put in too much time to work and sacrifice personal and rest time.
Monitor the Location of Employees
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 even 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, 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 locations and how much time 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 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 team report on the progress of their tasks. HubStaff can then use this to offer a report on the status of every project on a weekly basis. On the team dashboard, managers can see 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 User Manual
Aside from 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 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 employee.
Managers can also pause the system manually for breaks.
With HubStaff, keeping a record of working hours and wages is also made easier. HubStaff’s citizenship handling 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. Money transfers for payroll can even be automatically set to weekly, monthly, or on a set period.
Job Tracking for Clients Hubstaff User Manual
Becoming transparent to clients is key for establishing trust for your company. HubStaff makes it easy to communicate with clients, as well as assure them that things are moving as agreed upon.
HubStaff makes it easy for clients to have 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 phases of the project, in addition to the completed and pending 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 good 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 manage employees can be counterproductive since it may make an atmosphere of distrust between managers and team members. To ease your mind, you can be sure 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 precisely how they’re being monitored.
However, as a business owner or manager, it is your duty 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 tracking system.
To put it simply, HubStaff is a tracking system rather than a surveillance system. Employees can be sure that only the instances 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 workers 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 $10, while the Premium and Enterprise plans cost $10 and $20 respectively.
Just the Premium and Enterprise plans unlock attributes related to payroll administration. The enterprise feature comprises fleet tracking and even a concierge account.
For those who are willing 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 User Manual
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 promises to do. The user interface is intuitive and clean, and is not in any way confusing, requiring only minimal orientation for workers not familiar with the software.
However, it has to be said that not all companies might benefit fully from using HubStaff. HubStaff is especially suited to contemporary desk jobs, 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 on 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 merely a project management software using features and tools that can help you gauge the performance of employees and other members of the team. This is in no way 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 User Manual
Q: Where do the screenshots go?
A: HubStaff shops the screenshots and other information using Amazon AWS.
Q: Is there a maximum number of team members who can use HubStaff?
A: The paid plans have a minimum of two users and cap of 350 users.
Q: Why 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 just based on United States laws. It’s wise to consult with a lawyer for international users.
Q: Can employees choose when they are being monitored?
A: Yes, employees can manually start and end HubStaff tracking and have it run in the background. HubStaff doesn’t collect any data once monitoring ends.