With the rise of internet work-from-home jobs and freelancing, our notion of a workplace is steadily changing. Now, our notion of a traditional 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 based in the United States, offers its services for traditional, distant, or even completely online offices.
An employee monitoring 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. Aside from monitoring behaviour, it can also be used to handle any sort of workplace and make it more productive.
Monitor Productivity and Improve Coordination with HubStaff Is Hubstaff Good for Freelance Writers
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 networking app will wind up consuming hours of our time, even at work. Checking up on important notifications from time to time is acceptable, but it’s helpful if supervisors know when it’s becoming a problem. HubStaff can help track if workers use an excessive amount of social media and other programs that hamper productivity.
HubStaff can take note of the websites (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 them can also be listed.
The information is displayed neatly, and managers can see the page title of the visited webpages, 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 websites unrelated to work.
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Display 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’s impossible to manage employees in person.
HubStaff has a quality that could 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 can be set to have the screenshots be partly blurred. 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 should be noted that workers 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 they’ll be ensured that this feature is implemented only for reasons related to work.
That said, this still has an influence 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 employee 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 overall time in which the mouse or keyboard is active to the total time spent working. HubStaff believes a productivity rate of at least 60% as a great sign. Productivity rates of less than 60% can indicate 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 shows the productivity rate of each 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 Is Hubstaff Good for Freelance Writers
Working overtime is also becoming more of a norm, even so in countries like Japan where it’s an unofficial standard. Reasons can range from employees wanting to complete their tasks early, catch up on jobs, and some are only workaholics who wish to be running as much as you can.
However, it has been proven that too much work can be harmful as creativity and productivity declines without enough rest. There is a great reason why there is a standard 8 hours of work each day.
HubStaff can help managers track if workers are working too much hours per week. They could set the maximum time each week which workers can stay logged on for work. Following the maximum time has been reached, then the time tracking tool stops. This way, 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 tough to communicate and organize the team. Some employees might be leaping from place to place for work, and even be operating 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 group 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 rapid meetings.
As this requires employees to install HubStaff on their phones, this can be seen as too intrusive of a tool. But same as the rules on iOS and Android programs, employees will know exactly when their places are being monitored.
Project Progress Monitoring
HubStaff lets the entire team report on the progress of their tasks. HubStaff can then use this to provide a report on the status of each job 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 Is Hubstaff Good for Freelance Writers
Besides 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 be a digital check-in and check-out mechanism for companies. And, better than traditional systems where timesheets can be cheated, the HubStaff timesheet tool can capture the very first keyboard stroke or mouse activity 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 simpler. 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. Money transfers for payroll can even be automatically set to weekly, monthly, or on a set period.
Project Tracking for Customers Is Hubstaff Good for Freelance Writers
Being transparent to customers is key for establishing trust for your business. HubStaff makes it effortless to communicate with clients, in addition to assure them that things are going as agreed upon.
HubStaff makes it simple 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, in addition to the completed and pending tasks.
Third party Software Integration
HubStaff can integrate well with other project tracking tools including but not limited to Asana and Trello. This is great 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 may make an atmosphere 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 be sure that their actions are monitored only during work hours, and precisely how they’re being monitored.
However, as a company owner or manager, it is your duty to let your workers 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 monitoring 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, and not the actual keystroke that they register. HubStaff will not let managers and admins know just what 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 $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 comprises fleet tracking and even a concierge accounts.
For those who are willing to pay on an annual basis, then the cost per person per month of their paid plans will be slashed down to $5, 8$, and $16, respectively.
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Verdict Is Hubstaff Good for Freelance Writers
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 do the job that it promises to do. The user interface is intuitive and clean, and is not at all confusing, requiring only minimal orientation for employees not knowledgeable about the software.
However, it has to be stated that not all businesses might benefit fully from utilizing HubStaff. HubStaff is specially suited to contemporary desk jobs, and for projects where staff members use computers for most of their time. Take jobs that require a whole 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 features and tools that will 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 Is Hubstaff Good for Freelance Writers
Q: Where do the screenshots go?
A: HubStaff stores the screenshots and other data using Amazon AWS.
Q: Is there a maximum number of group members that may use HubStaff?
A: The paid programs have a minimum of 2 users and limit of 350 users.
Q: Why 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 is wise to check 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 does not collect any data once monitoring ends.