With the rise of internet work-from-home jobs and freelancing, our concept of a workplace is steadily changing. Today, our notion of a traditional workplace can differ from the rooms filled with 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 traditional, distant, or even entirely online workplaces.
An employee monitoring software is used to track whether or not employees are keeping on with their duties, as well as screen and be aware of unwanted or prohibited activity. Aside from monitoring behavior, it can also be used to manage any type of workplace and make it more productive.
Monitor Productivity and Improve Coordination with HubStaff Hubstaff Desktop
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 networking app will end up consuming hours of our time, even in the workplace. Assessing 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 track if employees use an excessive amount of social media and other applications that hamper productivity.
HubStaff can take note of the websites (and even the url of the specific page) that employees see during work hours, as well as the time they spend on it. Traffic from applications can also be monitored and the time spent on these is also 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 one glance. They can also go to the links displayed to verify if employees really are letting time slide on websites unrelated to work.
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Screen Monitoring
Tracking individual screens 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 is impossible to manage employees in person.
HubStaff has a feature that can enable managers to take screenshots of the employees’ screens at a customizable time interval, 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. This way, managers can determine if employees are working on their desks instead of 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 look at the screenshots taken from their displays just so that 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 behavior of employees as knowing that their displays are monitored 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 present.
HubStaff can then compare the overall time where 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% can 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 team. 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 Desktop
Working overtime is also becoming more of a standard, even so in countries such as Japan where it’s an unofficial standard. Reasons can vary from employees wanting to complete their jobs early, catch up on projects, and some are only workaholics who want to be working 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’s a good reason why there is a regular 8 hours of work every day.
HubStaff can help managers monitor if workers are working too much hours each week. They could set the maximum time every week which employees can stay logged on for work. After 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 too much time to work and sacrifice personal and rest 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 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 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 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 in their phones, this may be seen as too intrusive of a tool. However, same as the principles on iOS and Android programs, employees will know exactly when their places are being tracked.
Project Progress Monitoring
HubStaff lets the whole team report on the progress of their tasks. HubStaff can then use this to provide a report on the status of every project on a weekly basis. On the team dashboard, managers can view 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 Desktop
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 digital check-in and check-out mechanism for businesses. And, better than conventional systems where timesheets can be cheated, the HubStaff timesheet tool can record the first keyboard stroke or mouse activity of the day for each employee.
Managers can also pause the machine manually for breaks.
With HubStaff, keeping a list of working hours and wages is also made easier. 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. Money transfers for payroll can even be automatically set to weekly, monthly, or on a set interval.
Project Tracking for Customers Hubstaff Desktop
Being transparent to customers 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 simple for clients to have a peek into the progress of projects. This can be simply accomplished by including clients into the members tab. From there, they could see the stages of the project, in addition to the completed and pending tasks.
Third party Software Integration
HubStaff can integrate nicely with other project monitoring tools such as but not limited to Asana and Trello. This is great news for business owners that 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 a feeling of distrust between managers and staff members. To ease your mind, you can be sure that HubStaff lets the entire team know of the entire monitoring system. Employees can make certain that their actions are monitored only during work hours, and exactly how they are being monitored.
However, as a company owner or manager, it is your responsibility to let your workers 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 rather than a surveillance system. Employees can be sure that only the instances of their keystrokes and mouse actions are recorded, 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 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.
Only the Premium and Enterprise plans unlock attributes related to payroll administration. The enterprise feature comprises fleet tracking and even a concierge account.
For those who are ready to pay on an annual basis, then the cost per person per month of their paid plans will be slashed down to $5, 8$, and $16, respectively.
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Verdict Hubstaff Desktop
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 certain that HubStaff can flawlessly perform the job that it claims to do. The user interface is intuitive and clean, and isn’t in any way confusing, requiring only minimal orientation for employees not knowledgeable about the software.
However, it must be said that not all businesses might benefit fully from using HubStaff. HubStaff is especially 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 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 reality
Business owners should also not completely depend on the information 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 will allow you to gauge the performance of employees and other members of the group. This is in no way 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 Desktop
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 who 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 are available on their website. But these are just based on United States laws. It is 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 doesn’t collect any data once monitoring ends.