With the rise of online work-from-home jobs and freelancing, our notion of a workplace is steadily changing. Today, our concept of a conventional workplace can differ 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, remote, or even completely 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 be aware of unwanted or illegal activity. Apart 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 Site:problogger.com 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 frequently, a few swipes on any social media 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 managers know when it’s becoming a problem. HubStaff can help monitor if employees use too much social media and other programs that hamper productivity.
HubStaff can take note of the sites (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 tracked and the time spent on these can also be listed.
The data is displayed neatly, and supervisors can see the page title of the visited webpages, 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 sites unrelated to work.
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Display Monitoring
Tracking individual screens is too much of a hassle and can be quite awkward if done personally. But then, it’s necessary for when a remote workplace setup is in order where it’s impossible to handle employees in person.
HubStaff has a feature that can enable managers to take screenshots of their 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 could be set to have the screenshots be partially blurred. In this way, managers can determine if workers are working in their desks rather than playing games or watching movies, without exposing potential sensitive information.
It should be noted that workers would understand that this feature is activated on their screens. Employees would also have the ability to view the screenshots taken from their displays 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 behaviour of employees as knowing that their screens 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 detect times of inactivity where none of those instances are found.
HubStaff can then compare the overall time in which the mouse or keyboard is busy 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 mean 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 every member of the group. This way, the tool may also be used to see how many members of this team are working on a project at a given time.
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Work Limit Monitoring Site:problogger.com Hubstaff
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 finish their jobs early, catch up on jobs, and some are only workaholics who wish to be running as much as possible.
However, it’s been demonstrated that too much work can be harmful as productivity and creativity declines without enough rest. There is a great reason why there’s a standard 8 hours of work every day.
HubStaff can help managers monitor if employees are working too much hours each week. They can set the maximum time every week that workers can stay logged on for work. After the maximum time has been reached, then the time tracking tool stops. This way, workaholic tendencies are curbed, and that workers will not 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 might find it hard 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 workers are commuting from 1 place to another, or if they are doing field work.
Members of the group can install HubStaff on their smartphones so that the employee place monitoring feature can be used. With this, managers and team leaders can monitor 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 needs 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 applications, employees will know exactly 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 provide a report on the status of each job 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.
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Payroll, Timesheets, and other Miscellaneous Features Site:problogger.com Hubstaff
Besides 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 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 worker.
Managers can also pause the system manually for breaks.
With HubStaff, maintaining a list of working hours and wages 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. Cash transfers for payroll can even be automatically set to weekly, monthly, or on a set period.
Project Tracking for Clients Site:problogger.com Hubstaff
Being transparent to clients is key for establishing trust for your business. HubStaff makes it easy to communicate with customers, as well as assure them that things are going as agreed upon.
HubStaff makes it simple 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, 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 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 whole team know of the entire monitoring system. Employees can be sure that their activities are monitored only during work hours, and exactly how they are being monitored.
However, as a company owner or manager, it is your duty to let your employees 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 tracking system.
To put it simply, HubStaff is a tracking system rather than a surveillance system. Employees can be certain that only the cases of their keystrokes and mouse activity are listed, 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 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.
Just the Premium and Enterprise plans unlock attributes related to payroll management. The enterprise feature includes fleet monitoring and even a concierge account.
For those people who are willing to pay on an annual basis, then the price per person per month of the paid programs will be slashed down to $5, 8$, and $16, respectively.
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Verdict Site:problogger.com 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 promises to do. The user interface is clean and intuitive, and isn’t in any way confusing, requiring only minimal orientation for employees not familiar with the software.
However, it has to be said that not all businesses might benefit fully from using HubStaff. HubStaff is specially suited to modern desk tasks, and for projects where team members use computers for most of their time. Take jobs that require 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 information that HubStaff collects to determine whether their employees are being productive or not. HubStaff is simply a project management software with features and tools that can help you gauge the performance of employees 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.
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FAQ Site:problogger.com Hubstaff
Q: Where do the screenshots go?
A: HubStaff shops the screenshots and other data using Amazon AWS.
Q: Is there a maximum number of group members that can use HubStaff?
A: The paid plans have a minimum of two users and cap of 350 users.
Q: Is implementing HubStaff in businesses completely legal?
A: HubStaff has complete legal permissions for use, and resources regarding them can be found on their website. But 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 are being tracked?
A: Yes, employees can manually start and end HubStaff tracking and have it run in the background. HubStaff does not collect any data once tracking ends.