With the rise of internet work-from-home jobs and freelancing, our concept of a workplace is steadily changing. Now, our notion of a traditional workplace can be different from the rooms full of 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, remote, or even entirely online offices.
An employee tracking software is used to track whether or not employees are keeping on with their responsibilities, as well as screen and be aware of unwanted or illegal activity. Apart 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 Shift Alerts on Hubstaff
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 often, 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 is helpful if managers know when it’s becoming a problem. HubStaff can help track if workers use too much social media and other applications that hamper productivity.
HubStaff can take note of the sites (and even the url of the exact page) that workers visit during work hours, in addition to the time they spend on it. Traffic from applications can also be monitored and the time spent on these can also be recorded.
The information is displayed neatly, and supervisors can see the page name of the visited webpages, the url, and the time spent, all in a single glance. They can also visit the links displayed to confirm if workers really are letting time slide on sites unrelated to work.
> > Click Here to try Hubstaff for Free! < <
Screen Monitoring
Tracking individual displays is too much of a hassle and can be very awkward if done personally. But then, it’s crucial for when a remote workplace setup is in order where it’s impossible to manage employees in person.
HubStaff has a feature that could enable managers to take screenshots of the 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 partially blurred. This way, managers can determine if workers 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 be able to look at the screenshots taken from their screens just so they’ll be ensured that this feature is implemented just for reasons related to work.
With that said, this still has an influence on the behavior 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 measure of worker 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 total time where the mouse or keyboard is active to the total 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 an employee 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. This way, the tool may also be used to see how many members of the team are working on a project at a specified time.
> > Click Here to try Hubstaff for Free! < <
Work Limit Monitoring Shift Alerts on Hubstaff
Working overtime is also becoming more of a standard, even so in countries such as Japan where it’s an unofficial standard. Reasons can range from employees wanting to finish their jobs early, catch up on projects, and some are only workaholics who want to be working as much as you can.
However, it has been demonstrated that too much work can be detrimental as creativity and productivity declines without enough rest. There is a good reason why there is a regular 8 hours of work each day.
HubStaff can help managers monitor if employees are working too much hours per week. They could set the maximum time each week that workers can stay 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 workers won’t be given the incentive to put in too much 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 coordinate the team. Some employees may be leaping from place to place for work, and also be working from cafes or other workstations.
Setting up unplanned meetings can be hard if workers are commuting from one place to another, or if they are doing field work.
Members of the group can install HubStaff in their smartphones so that the employee place monitoring feature can be used. With this, supervisors 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 quick meetings.
As this requires employees to install HubStaff in their phones, this can be seen as overly intrusive of a tool. However, same as the principles on iOS and Android programs, employees will know precisely when their locations are being tracked.
Project Progress Monitoring
HubStaff lets the whole group 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 staff 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 Shift Alerts on Hubstaff
Aside from monitoring employee productivity, HubStaff can also make it easier for managers and admins to handle 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 record 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 list of working hours and wages is also made easier. HubStaff’s citizenship handling 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 Shift Alerts on Hubstaff
Being transparent to customers is key for establishing trust for your business. HubStaff makes it easy to communicate with clients, in addition to assure them that things are moving 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 can see the stages of the project, as well as the pending and completed tasks.
Third party Applications Integration
HubStaff can integrate nicely with other project tracking tools including but not limited to Asana and Trello. This is great news for business owners that are already using other project management software.
> > Click Here to try Hubstaff for Free! < <
Employee Spying?
You might be wondering if using HubStaff to manage employees can be counterproductive since it might make a feeling of distrust between managers and staff members. To ease your mind, you can be certain that HubStaff lets the whole team know of the whole monitoring system. Employees can be sure that their activities are monitored only during work hours, and precisely how they are being monitored.
However, as a company owner or manager, it’s your responsibility 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 monitoring system and not a surveillance system. Employees can be certain that only the cases of the keystrokes and mouse activity are recorded, rather than the actual keystroke that they register. HubStaff won’t let managers and admins know just what their employees 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 $10, while the Premium and Enterprise plans cost $10 and $20 respectively.
Only the Premium and Enterprise plans unlock attributes associated with payroll administration. The enterprise feature comprises fleet tracking and even a concierge accounts.
For those people who are ready 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 Shift Alerts on Hubstaff
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 perform the job that it claims to do. The user interface is clean and intuitive, and is not in any way confusing, requiring only minimal orientation for workers not knowledgeable about the software.
However, it has to be said that not all companies might benefit fully from utilizing HubStaff. HubStaff is especially suited to contemporary desk jobs, and for projects where staff members use computers for the majority of their time. Take jobs that require 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 if their employees are being productive or not. HubStaff is simply a project management software with features and tools that will help you gauge the performance of workers and other members of the group. 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.
> > Click Here to try Hubstaff for Free! < <
FAQ Shift Alerts on Hubstaff
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 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 can be found on their website. However, these are only based on United States laws. It’s wise to check with a lawyer for international users.
Q: Can employees choose when they’re being monitored?
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.