With the rise of internet work-from-home jobs and freelancing, our concept of a workplace is steadily changing. Today, our concept 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 traditional, distant, or even entirely online workplaces.
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 illegal activity. Apart from monitoring behaviour, it may also be used to manage any type of workplace and make it more productive.
Monitor Productivity and Improve Coordination with HubStaff Hubstaff How to Use
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 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 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 websites (and even the url of the specific page) that workers visit during work hours, as well as the time they spend on it. Traffic from applications can also be monitored and the time spent on them is also listed.
The information is displayed neatly, and supervisors can see the page name of the visited webpages, 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 websites 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 necessary for when a remote workplace setup is in order where it is impossible to handle employees in person.
HubStaff has a feature that could enable managers to take screenshots of their employees’ screens at a customizable time period, with 10 minutes as the default. If this 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 workers are working in their desks instead of playing games or watching movies, without exposing possible sensitive information.
It should be noted that employees would know that this feature is activated on their displays. Employees would also have the ability to view the screenshots taken from their screens just so that they’ll be ensured that this feature is implemented just 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 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 worker activity. HubStaff can detect keyboard strokes and mouse interaction and detect times of inactivity where none of these instances are found.
HubStaff can then compare the total time in which the mouse or keyboard is active to the total 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 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 shows the productivity rate of every member of the group. 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 How to Use
Working overtime is also becoming more of a norm, even so in countries like Japan where it’s an unofficial standard. Reasons can range from employees wanting to complete their jobs early, catch up on projects, and some are just workaholics who want to be running as much as you can.
However, it has been proven that too much work could be detrimental as productivity and creativity declines without enough rest. There is a great reason why there is a standard 8 hours of work each day.
HubStaff can help managers monitor if workers are working too much hours each week. They could set the maximum time each week which workers can remain 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 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 might be jumping from place to place for work, and even be working from cafes or other workstations.
Setting up unplanned meetings can be hard if employees are commuting from 1 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 track the location of their members during work hours.
HubStaff can display how much time employees spend on commuting between places and how much time is spent on each location. From these data, managers can determine the best time to do rapid meetings.
As this needs employees to install HubStaff on their phones, this can be seen as overly intrusive of a tool. However, same as the principles on iOS and Android programs, employees will know exactly when their locations are being tracked.
Project Progress Monitoring
HubStaff lets the whole group report on the progress of their tasks. HubStaff can then use this to provide a report on the status of each 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 workers are online.
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Payroll, Timesheets, and other Miscellaneous Features Hubstaff How to Use
Aside from monitoring 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 very 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 record of working hours and salaries 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. Money transfers for payroll can even be automatically set to weekly, monthly, or on a set interval.
Job Tracking for Clients Hubstaff How to Use
Being transparent to customers is key for establishing trust for your business. HubStaff makes it easy to communicate with clients, in addition to 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 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 Software Integration
HubStaff can integrate well with other project tracking tools such as but not limited to Asana and Trello. This is good 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 may make an atmosphere of distrust between managers and team members. To ease your mind, you can be certain that HubStaff lets the whole team know of the whole monitoring system. Employees can make certain that their actions are monitored only during work hours, and exactly how they are being tracked.
However, as a company 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 monitoring system.
To put it simply, HubStaff is a tracking system and not a surveillance system. Employees can be sure that only the cases of the 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 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 How to Use
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 clean and intuitive, and isn’t in any way confusing, requiring only minimal orientation for workers not familiar with the software.
However, it must be stated that not all businesses might benefit fully from using HubStaff. HubStaff is specially suited to contemporary desk tasks, and for projects where staff members use computers for most 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 at the top of a reading assignment in reality
Business owners should also not completely depend on the data 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 can allow you to 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 Hubstaff How to Use
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 that can use HubStaff?
A: The paid programs have a minimum of 2 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 website. But these are only based on United States laws. It is 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 tracking and have it run in the background. HubStaff doesn’t collect any data once monitoring ends.