With the rise of internet work-from-home jobs and freelancing, our notion of a workplace is steadily changing. Today, 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 firm of the same name based in the United States, offers its services for conventional, distant, or even completely online offices.
An employee monitoring software is used to track whether or not employees are keeping on with their duties, 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 Virtual Office
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 networking app is going to wind 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 employees 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 workers 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 listed.
The information is displayed neatly, and managers can see the page name of the visited pages, 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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Screen Monitoring
Monitoring 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 handle employees in person.
HubStaff has a feature that can 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 partially blurred. This way, managers can determine if employees are working in their desks rather than playing games or watching movies, without exposing possible sensitive information.
It should be noted that employees would know 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 only for reasons related to work.
With 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 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 found.
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 great 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 every member of the team. This way, the tool may 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 Virtual Office
Working overtime is also becoming more of a standard, even so in countries such as Japan where it’s an unofficial standard. Reasons can vary from employees wanting to complete their tasks early, catch up on projects, 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 creativity and productivity declines without enough rest. There is a good reason why there’s a regular 8 hours of work each day.
HubStaff can help managers track if employees are working a lot of hours each week. They can set the maximum time each week that employees can remain logged on for work. After the maximum time has been reached, then the time tracking 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 personal and rest time.
Monitor the Location of Employees
Managers working with remote teams might find it hard to communicate and coordinate the team. Some employees may be jumping from place to place for work, and also be operating from cafes or other workstations.
Setting up unplanned meetings can be hard if employees are commuting from 1 place to another, or if they’re doing field work.
Members of the group can install HubStaff in their smartphones so that the employee location monitoring feature can be used. With this, managers and team leaders can monitor 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 rapid meetings.
As this needs employees to install HubStaff on their phones, this may be seen as too intrusive of a tool. But same as the rules on iOS and Android applications, employees will know exactly when their locations are being monitored.
Project Progress Monitoring
HubStaff lets the entire team report on the progress of their tasks. HubStaff can then use this to offer 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 the completed and uncompleted tasks. The dashboard also shows whether workers are online.
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Payroll, Timesheets, and other Miscellaneous Features Hubstaff Virtual Office
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 be a virtual 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 employee.
Managers can also pause the system manually for breaks.
With HubStaff, maintaining a list 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 simple. Money transfers for payroll can even be automatically set to weekly, monthly, or on a set interval.
Job Tracking for Customers Hubstaff Virtual Office
Being transparent to customers is key for establishing trust for your business. 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 take a peek into the progress of jobs. This can be simply accomplished by including clients into the members tab. From there, they could see the phases of the project, as well as the completed and pending tasks.
Third party Software Integration
HubStaff can integrate well with other project monitoring tools including but not limited to Asana and Trello. This is good 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 manage employees can be counterproductive since it may make a feeling of distrust between managers and team members. To ease your mind, you can be certain that HubStaff lets the entire team know of the entire monitoring system. Employees can be sure that their activities are monitored only during work hours, and precisely how they’re being monitored.
However, as a company owner or manager, it is your responsibility to let your workers 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 sure that only the instances of the keystrokes and mouse activity are recorded, and not the actual keystroke that they register. HubStaff won’t let managers and admins know what exactly 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.
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 ready to pay on an annual basis, then the price per person per month of the paid plans will be slashed down to $5, 8$, and $16, respectively.
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Verdict Hubstaff Virtual Office
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 workers not familiar with the software.
However, it has to be stated that not all companies might benefit fully from utilizing HubStaff. HubStaff is specially suited to contemporary desk jobs, and for projects where team members use computers for most of their time. Take jobs that take 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 on top of a reading assignment in fact
Business owners should also not completely depend on the data that HubStaff collects to determine 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 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 Virtual Office
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 two users and limit 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. But 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’re being monitored?
A: Yes, employees can manually start and finish HubStaff tracking and have it run in the background. HubStaff doesn’t collect any data once tracking ends.