With the rise of internet work-from-home jobs and freelancing, our concept 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 company of the same name established in the United States, offers its services for conventional, distant, 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 look out for unwanted or prohibited activity. Aside from monitoring behavior, it may also be used to handle any type of workplace and make it more productive.
Monitor Productivity and Improve Coordination with HubStaff Hubstaff Alternative Open Source
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 often, 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 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 pay attention to the websites (and even the url of the exact 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 information is displayed neatly, and managers 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 confirm if workers really are allowing time slide on sites unrelated to work.
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Display Monitoring
Monitoring individual displays is too much of a hassle and can be quite 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 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 partly blurred. This way, managers can determine if employees are working on their desks rather than playing games or watching movies, without exposing possible sensitive information.
It must be noted that workers would know that this feature is activated on their displays. Employees would also be able 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 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 employee activity. HubStaff can detect keyboard strokes and mouse interaction and discover times of inactivity where none of those instances are found.
HubStaff can then compare the total 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 great sign. Productivity rates of less than 60% may mean 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 every member of the team. In 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 Hubstaff Alternative Open Source
Working overtime is also becoming more of a standard, even so in countries like Japan where it is an unofficial standard. Reasons can range from employees wanting to finish their jobs early, catch up on projects, and some are just workaholics who want to be working as much as you can.
However, it has been proven that too much work can be detrimental as creativity and productivity declines without enough rest. There’s a great reason why there is a regular 8 hours of work every day.
HubStaff can help managers track if workers are working too much hours each week. They could set the maximum time every week which employees can remain logged on for work. Following the maximum time has been reached, then the time tracking 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 may find it hard to communicate and organize the team. Some employees may be jumping 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 team can install HubStaff on their telephones so that the employee place monitoring feature can be utilized. With this, managers and team leaders can monitor 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 rapid meetings.
As this requires employees to install HubStaff on their phones, this can be seen as too intrusive of a tool. However, same as the rules on iOS and Android programs, employees will know exactly when their locations are being tracked.
Project Progress Monitoring
HubStaff lets the entire team 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 displays whether employees are online.
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Payroll, Timesheets, and other Miscellaneous Features Hubstaff Alternative Open Source
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 function as 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, maintaining a list 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 Customers Hubstaff Alternative Open Source
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 moving as agreed upon.
HubStaff makes it easy for clients to have a peek into the progress of projects. This can be simply done 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 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 software.
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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 staff members. To ease your mind, you can be certain that HubStaff lets the entire team know of the entire monitoring system. Employees can make certain that their activities are monitored only during work hours, and exactly how they are being tracked.
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 monitoring system and not a surveillance system. Employees can be certain that only the instances of the keystrokes and mouse activity are listed, rather than the actual keystroke that they register. HubStaff will not let managers and admins know what exactly 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 account.
For those people who are willing 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 Hubstaff Alternative Open Source
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 promises to do. The user interface is clean and intuitive, 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 team members use computers for the majority of their time. Take jobs that take 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 data that HubStaff collects to determine whether their employees are being productive or not. HubStaff is simply a project management software using features and tools that can help you gauge the performance of workers 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.
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FAQ Hubstaff Alternative Open Source
Q: Where do the screenshots go?
A: HubStaff stores the screenshots and other information using Amazon AWS.
Q: Is there a maximum number of group members who may use HubStaff?
A: The paid plans have a minimum of 2 users and cap 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 site. However, these are only based on United States laws. It’s best to consult 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 tracking ends.