With the rise of online work-from-home jobs and freelancing, our notion of a workplace is steadily changing. Now, our notion 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 conventional, remote, or even entirely online offices.
An employee tracking software is used to monitor whether or not employees are keeping on with their duties, in addition to screen and look out for unwanted or illegal activity. Aside from monitoring behaviour, it may also be used to handle any sort of workplace and make it more productive.
Monitor Productivity and Improve Coordination with HubStaff Running Hubstaff in Virtual Machine
HubStaff includes the features that you would expect from an employee monitoring 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 will wind up consuming hours of our time, even at work. Assessing 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 monitor if employees use an excessive amount of social media and other programs that hamper productivity.
HubStaff can pay attention to the sites (and even the url of the specific page) that employees 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 these can also be listed.
The data is displayed neatly, and managers can see the page title of the visited pages, the url, and the time spent, all in one glance. They can also visit the links displayed to confirm if workers really are letting time slide on websites unrelated to work.
> > Click Here to try Hubstaff for Free! < <
Display Monitoring
Tracking individual screens is too much of a hassle and can be very awkward if done personally. But then, it is crucial 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 their employees’ screens at a customizable time interval, with 10 minutes as the default. If it sounds too much of an invasion of privacy, then it can 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 should be noted that workers would understand 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.
That said, this still has an effect on the behaviour of employees as knowing that their displays 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 step of employee activity. HubStaff can detect keyboard strokes and mouse interaction and discover times of inactivity where none of these instances are found.
HubStaff can then compare the overall time where the mouse or keyboard is busy to the total time spent working. HubStaff considers a productivity rate of at least 60% as a great sign. Productivity rates of less than 60% may indicate that an employee 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. 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.
> > Click Here to try Hubstaff for Free! < <
Work Limit Monitoring Running Hubstaff in Virtual Machine
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 complete their jobs early, catch up on jobs, and some are only workaholics who want to be working as much as you can.
However, it has been proven that too much work could be detrimental as creativity and productivity declines without enough rest. There is a great reason why there’s a standard 8 hours of work each day.
HubStaff can help managers monitor if workers are working a lot of hours per week. They could set the maximum time every week which 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 curbed, and that workers will not 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 might find it tough to communicate and organize the team. Some employees may be leaping from place to place for work, and even be operating 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 in their telephones so that the employee place monitoring feature can be used. With this, supervisors 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 long 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 on their phones, this may be seen as too intrusive of a tool. But same as the principles on iOS and Android applications, employees will know exactly when their locations are being tracked.
Project Progress Monitoring
HubStaff lets the entire group report on the progress of their tasks. HubStaff can then use this to offer a report on the status of each job 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 shows whether employees are online.
> > Click Here to try Hubstaff for Free! < <
Payroll, Timesheets, and other Miscellaneous Features Running Hubstaff in Virtual Machine
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 businesses. And, better than traditional 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 machine manually for breaks.
With HubStaff, keeping a record of working hours and wages 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. Cash transfers for payroll can even be automatically set to weekly, monthly, or on a set interval.
Project Tracking for Customers Running Hubstaff in Virtual Machine
Becoming transparent to customers is key for establishing trust for your business. HubStaff makes it effortless to communicate with customers, as well as assure them that things are moving as agreed upon.
HubStaff makes it simple for clients to have a peek into the progress of jobs. This can be simply done by including clients into the members tab. From there, they could 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 monitoring tools such as but not limited to Asana and Trello. This is great news for business owners who are already using other project management applications.
> > Click Here to try Hubstaff for Free! < <
Employee Spying?
You might be wondering 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 whole team know of the entire monitoring system. Employees can be sure that their activities are monitored only during work hours, and precisely how they are being tracked.
However, as a company owner or manager, it’s your duty to let your employees know beforehand that your office 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 and not a surveillance system. Employees can be sure that only the cases of their keystrokes and mouse actions are recorded, rather than the actual keystroke that they register. HubStaff won’t let managers and admins know just what their workers are typing.
> > Click Here to try Hubstaff for Free! < <
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 management. The enterprise feature comprises fleet tracking and even a concierge accounts.
For those people who are willing to pay on an annual basis, then the cost per person per month of the paid plans will be slashed down to $5, 8$, and $16, respectively.
> > Click Here to try Hubstaff for Free! < <
Verdict Running Hubstaff in Virtual Machine
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 claims to do. The user interface is intuitive and clean, and is not in any way confusing, requiring only minimal orientation for workers not knowledgeable about the software.
However, it must be stated that not all businesses might benefit fully from using HubStaff. HubStaff is specially suited to modern desk jobs, and for projects where team 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 rely on the data that HubStaff collects to ascertain if 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 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.
> > Click Here to try Hubstaff for Free! < <
FAQ Running Hubstaff in Virtual Machine
Q: Where do the screenshots go?
A: HubStaff stores the screenshots and other data using Amazon AWS.
Q: Is there a maximum number of team members that can use HubStaff?
A: The paid plans have a minimum of 2 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 are available on their website. However, these are just based on United States laws. It is best to consult with a lawyer for international users.
Q: Can employees choose when they’re being tracked?
A: Yes, employees can manually start and finish HubStaff monitoring and have it run in the background. HubStaff does not collect any data once tracking ends.