With the rise of online work-from-home jobs and freelancing, our concept of a workplace is steadily changing. Now, 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 established in the United States, offers its services for traditional, distant, or even entirely online workplaces.
An employee tracking software is used to track whether or not employees are keeping on with their responsibilities, in addition to screen and be aware of 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 Hubstaff Basic Plan
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 networking app is going to wind 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’s becoming a problem. HubStaff can help monitor if workers 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 exact page) that workers visit during work hours, as well as the time they spend on it. Traffic from applications can also be tracked and the time spent on these can also be recorded.
The information is displayed neatly, and supervisors can see the page title of the visited pages, 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.
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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 is impossible to handle employees in person.
HubStaff has a quality that can enable managers to take screenshots of their employees’ screens at a customizable time period, 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. In this way, managers can determine if employees are working on their desks rather than playing games or watching movies, without exposing potential sensitive information.
It should be noted that employees would know that this feature is activated on their displays. Employees would also be able to view the screenshots taken from their displays just so they’ll be assured that this feature is implemented just for reasons related to work.
With 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 worker 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 total time where the mouse or keyboard is busy to the overall time spent working. HubStaff considers a productivity rate of at least 60% as a good sign. Productivity rates of less than 60% may mean 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 displays the productivity rate of every 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.
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Work Limit Monitoring Hubstaff Basic Plan
Working overtime is also becoming more of a standard, even so in countries such as 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 just workaholics who wish to be running as much as possible.
However, it has been proven that too much work can be detrimental as creativity and productivity declines without enough rest. There is a good reason why there is a standard 8 hours of work every day.
HubStaff can help managers track if workers are working too much hours per week. They can set the maximum time each week which employees can remain 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 may find it tough to communicate and organize the team. Some employees may 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 employees are commuting from one place to another, or if they’re doing field work.
Members of the team can install HubStaff on their telephones so that the employee place monitoring feature can be used. With this, supervisors 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 too intrusive of a tool. But same as the rules on iOS and Android programs, employees will know precisely 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 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 Basic Plan
Aside from tracking 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 digital check-in and check-out mechanism for companies. And, better than conventional systems where timesheets can be cheated, the HubStaff timesheet tool can capture the first keyboard stroke or mouse action of the day for each employee.
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 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 interval.
Project Tracking for Clients Hubstaff Basic Plan
Becoming transparent to clients is key for establishing trust for your business. HubStaff makes it effortless to communicate with customers, as well as 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 done by adding 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 well with other project monitoring tools such as but not limited to Asana and Trello. This is good news for business owners who 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 since 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 tracked.
However, as a business owner or manager, it is your duty to let your employees know beforehand that your workplace 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 monitoring system and not a surveillance system. Employees can be certain that only the instances of their keystrokes and mouse activity are recorded, rather than the actual keystroke that they register. HubStaff will not let managers and admins know just what 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 $10, while the Premium and Enterprise plans cost $10 and $20 respectively.
Just the Premium and Enterprise plans unlock features associated with payroll management. The enterprise feature comprises fleet tracking and even a concierge account.
For those 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.
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Verdict Hubstaff Basic Plan
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 in any way confusing, requiring only minimal orientation for employees not familiar with the software.
However, it must be said that not all companies might benefit fully from using HubStaff. HubStaff is especially suited to contemporary desk tasks, and for projects where staff members use computers for the majority of their time. Take jobs that take a 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 on top of a reading assignment in fact
Business owners should also not completely depend on the data that HubStaff collects to ascertain if their employees are being productive or not. HubStaff is merely a project management software using tools and features that will allow you to 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 Hubstaff Basic Plan
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 who can use HubStaff?
A: The paid programs have a minimum of two 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’s wise to consult with a lawyer for international users.
Q: Can employees choose when they are being tracked?
A: Yes, employees can manually start and finish HubStaff monitoring and have it run in the background. HubStaff doesn’t collect any data once monitoring ends.