With the rise of online work-from-home jobs and freelancing, our concept of a workplace is steadily changing. Today, our notion of a conventional workplace can be different from the rooms full of 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 completely online offices.
An employee tracking software is used to monitor whether or not employees are keeping on with their responsibilities, in addition to screen and look out for unwanted or prohibited activity. Aside from monitoring behavior, it may also be used to manage any type of workplace and make it more productive.
Monitor Productivity and Improve Coordination with HubStaff How Does Hubstaff Track Activity
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 media app is going to end up consuming hours of our time, even in the workplace. Checking up 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 workers use too much social media and other programs that hamper productivity.
HubStaff can pay attention to the sites (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 can also be monitored and the time spent on these is also recorded.
The data is displayed neatly, and supervisors can see the page name of the visited pages, the url, and the time spent, all in one glance. They can also go to the links displayed to confirm if workers really are letting time slide on sites unrelated to work.
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Screen Monitoring
Monitoring individual displays 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 handle employees in person.
HubStaff has a feature that could enable managers to take screenshots of the employees’ screens at a customizable time period, with 10 minutes as the default option. If this sounds too much of an invasion of privacy, then it could 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 must 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 displays just so that they’ll be assured 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 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 discover 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 overall time spent working. HubStaff believes a productivity rate of at least 60% as a good sign. Productivity rates of less than 60% may 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 displays the productivity rate of each member of the team. 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.
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Work Limit Monitoring How Does Hubstaff Track Activity
Working overtime is also becoming more of a norm, even so in countries such as Japan where it’s an unofficial standard. Reasons can range from employees wanting to finish their tasks early, catch up on projects, and some are just workaholics who want to be running as much as possible.
However, it’s been demonstrated that too much work can be detrimental as creativity and productivity declines without enough rest. There’s a great reason why there’s a standard 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 every week that 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 suppressed, 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 coordinate the team. Some employees might be leaping from place to place for work, and also 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’re doing field work.
Members of the team can install HubStaff in their telephones so that the employee place monitoring feature can be utilized. With this, managers 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 long 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 may be seen as overly intrusive of a tool. However, same as the rules on iOS and Android programs, employees will know exactly when their locations are being monitored.
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 project on a weekly basis. On the team dashboard, managers can see each individual employee’s working hours and a summary of their completed and uncompleted tasks. The dashboard also shows whether employees are online.
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Payroll, Timesheets, and other Miscellaneous Features How Does Hubstaff Track Activity
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 function as a digital 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 system manually for breaks.
With HubStaff, maintaining a record of working hours and salaries is also made easier. HubStaff’s citizenship handling 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 simple. Money transfers for payroll can even be automatically set to weekly, monthly, or on a set period.
Job Tracking for Clients How Does Hubstaff Track Activity
Being transparent to clients is key for establishing trust for your company. HubStaff makes it effortless to communicate with customers, in addition to assure them that things are going as agreed upon.
HubStaff makes it easy for clients to take a peek into the progress of projects. This can be simply accomplished by adding clients into the members tab. From there, they could see the phases of the project, in addition to the completed and pending 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 applications.
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Employee Spying?
You may be asking yourself if using HubStaff to manage employees can be counterproductive as it might 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 monitored.
However, as a business owner or manager, it is your duty 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 certain that only the cases of the keystrokes and mouse actions are listed, rather than the actual keystroke that they register. HubStaff won’t let managers and admins know just what 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 $10, 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 includes fleet monitoring 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 programs will be slashed down to $5, 8$, and $16, respectively.
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Verdict How Does Hubstaff Track Activity
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 isn’t at all confusing, requiring only minimal orientation for employees not knowledgeable about the software.
However, it has to be said that not all companies might benefit fully from using HubStaff. HubStaff is especially suited to modern desk tasks, and for projects where team members use computers for the majority of their time. Take jobs that require a 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 on top of a reading assignment in reality
Business owners should also not completely rely on the data that HubStaff collects to ascertain whether their employees are being productive or not. HubStaff is merely a project management software with tools and features that will help you gauge the performance of employees and other members of the team. This is in no way 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 How Does Hubstaff Track Activity
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 who may use HubStaff?
A: The paid programs 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 site. 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 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 monitoring ends.