With the rise of internet work-from-home jobs and freelancing, our concept of a workplace is steadily changing. Now, our notion of a traditional workplace can be different from the rooms filled with individual cubicles that we were used to. HubStaff, a software from a firm of the same name established in the United States, offers its services for conventional, distant, or even entirely online workplaces.
An employee monitoring 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 prohibited activity. Apart from monitoring behavior, it can also be used to handle any sort of workplace and make it more productive.
Monitor Productivity and Improve Coordination with HubStaff Hubstaff Google Chrome Extension
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 at work. 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 applications that hamper productivity.
HubStaff can take note of the sites (and even the url of the exact page) that employees 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 them can also be listed.
The data is displayed neatly, and supervisors can see the page name of the visited webpages, the url, and the time spent, all in one glance. They can also go to the links displayed to verify 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 very awkward if done personally. But then, it is crucial for when a remote workplace setup is in order where it is impossible to manage employees in person.
HubStaff has a quality that could 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 can be set to have the screenshots be partially blurred. In this way, managers can determine if employees are working in their desks instead of playing games or watching movies, without exposing potential sensitive information.
It must be noted that employees would know that this feature is activated on their screens. Employees would also have the ability to view the screenshots taken from their screens just so they’ll be assured that this feature is implemented only for reasons related to work.
That said, this still has an influence on the behavior of employees as knowing that their screens 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 detect times of inactivity where none of those instances are found.
HubStaff can then compare the overall time where the mouse or keyboard is active 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% can indicate 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 each member of the group. In this way, the tool can 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 Google Chrome Extension
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 finish their tasks early, catch up on jobs, and some are just workaholics who want to be working as much as you can.
However, it has been demonstrated that too much work can be harmful 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 monitor if workers are working a lot of hours per 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 monitoring tool stops. In this manner, workaholic tendencies are curbed, 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 tough to communicate and coordinate the team. Some employees may be jumping 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 one place to another, or if they are doing field work.
Members of the team can install HubStaff in their telephones so that the employee location monitoring feature can be utilized. With this, supervisors and team leaders can track the location of the members during work hours.
HubStaff can display how much time employees spend on commuting between places 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 can be seen as overly intrusive of a tool. But same as the principles on iOS and Android programs, employees will know precisely when their places 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 their completed and uncompleted tasks. The dashboard also shows whether employees are online.
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Payroll, Timesheets, and other Miscellaneous Features Hubstaff Google Chrome Extension
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 digital 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 first keyboard stroke or mouse action 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 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.
Job Tracking for Clients Hubstaff Google Chrome Extension
Becoming transparent to customers is key for establishing trust for your company. HubStaff makes it easy to communicate with customers, as well as assure them that things are moving as agreed upon.
HubStaff makes it simple for clients to take 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, as well as the completed and pending 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 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 handle employees can be counterproductive as it may 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 whole monitoring system. Employees can be sure that their actions 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 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 and not a surveillance system. Employees can be certain that only the cases of their keystrokes and mouse actions are recorded, and not the actual keystroke that they register. HubStaff won’t let managers and admins know what exactly their workers 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 $7, while the Premium and Enterprise plans cost $10 and $20 respectively.
Only the Premium and Enterprise plans unlock features related to payroll administration. The enterprise feature comprises fleet monitoring and even a concierge accounts.
For those who are willing to pay on an annual basis, then the price per person per month of the paid plans will be slashed down to $5, 8$, and $16, respectively.
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Verdict Hubstaff Google Chrome Extension
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 intuitive and clean, and isn’t at all confusing, requiring only minimal orientation for workers not familiar with 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 most of their time. Take jobs that take 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 at the top of a reading assignment in fact
Business owners should also not completely rely on the information that HubStaff collects to determine if their employees are being productive or not. HubStaff is merely a project management software with 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 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 Google Chrome Extension
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 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 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 monitored?
A: Yes, employees can manually start and finish HubStaff monitoring and have it run in the background. HubStaff does not collect any data once tracking ends.