With the rise of online work-from-home jobs and freelancing, our notion 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 established in the United States, offers its services for conventional, remote, or even completely 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 may also be used to manage any sort of workplace and make it more productive.
Monitor Productivity and Improve Coordination with HubStaff Hubstaff Talent Vs Upwork
HubStaff includes the features that you would expect from an employee tracking software such as:
Online Activity Monitoring:
All of us know full well that social media kills productivity. All too often, a few swipes on any social networking app is going to wind up consuming hours of our time, even in the workplace. Assessing on important notifications from time to time is acceptable, but it’s helpful if supervisors know when it’s 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 specific page) that employees visit during work hours, in addition to the time they spend on it. Traffic from applications may also be monitored and the time spent on these 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 confirm if employees really are allowing time slide on websites unrelated to work.
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Screen Monitoring
Monitoring 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 quality 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 could be set to have the screenshots be partly blurred. This way, managers can determine if workers are working in their desks rather than playing games or watching movies, without exposing potential sensitive information.
It must be noted that workers would know 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 they’ll be assured that this feature is implemented only for reasons related to work.
With that said, this still has an effect 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 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 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% may mean 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 may also be used to see how many members of this team are working on a project at a given time.
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Work Limit Monitoring Hubstaff Talent Vs Upwork
Working overtime is also becoming more of a norm, even so in countries such as Japan where it is an unofficial standard. Reasons can range from employees wanting to finish their jobs early, catch up on jobs, and some are only workaholics who want to be running as much as possible.
However, it’s been proven that too much work can be harmful as productivity and creativity declines without enough rest. There’s a great reason why there’s a regular 8 hours of work each day.
HubStaff can help managers monitor if workers are working a lot of hours each week. They could set the maximum time each week which workers can stay logged on for work. Following the maximum time has been reached, then the time monitoring tool stops. In this manner, workaholic tendencies are suppressed, and that workers will not be given the incentive to put in too much time to work and sacrifice rest and personal time.
Monitor the Location of Workers
Managers working with remote teams might find it hard to communicate and coordinate the team. Some employees may be leaping from place to place for work, and even be working from cafes or other workstations.
Setting up unplanned meetings can be hard if workers are commuting from 1 place to another, or if they’re doing field work.
Members of the group can install HubStaff on their telephones so that the employee place 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 locations and how long is spent on each location. From these data, managers can determine the best time to do quick meetings.
As this needs employees to install HubStaff in their phones, this can be seen as too intrusive of a tool. However, same as the principles 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 staff dashboard, managers can view each individual employee’s working hours and a summary of their completed and uncompleted tasks. The dashboard also displays whether workers are online.
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Payroll, Timesheets, and other Miscellaneous Features Hubstaff Talent Vs Upwork
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 function as 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 record the very first keyboard stroke or mouse activity of the day for each employee.
Managers can also pause the system manually for breaks.
With HubStaff, keeping a list of working hours and salaries is also made simpler. HubStaff’s payroll managing tool can determine each employee’s payout based 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 interval.
Project Tracking for Clients Hubstaff Talent Vs Upwork
Being transparent to customers is key for establishing trust for your business. HubStaff makes it effortless to communicate with clients, in addition to assure them that things are going as agreed upon.
HubStaff makes it easy for clients to have a peek into the progress of jobs. This can be simply done by including clients into the members tab. From there, they can see the phases of the project, as well as the completed and pending tasks.
Third party Software Integration
HubStaff can integrate well with other project tracking tools including 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 as it might make a feeling of distrust between managers and team members. To ease your mind, you can be certain that HubStaff lets the entire team know of the entire monitoring system. Employees can be sure that their actions are monitored only during work hours, and exactly how they’re being monitored.
However, as a company owner or manager, it’s your responsibility 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 tracking system.
To put it simply, HubStaff is a monitoring system rather than a surveillance system. Employees can be certain that only the instances of their keystrokes and mouse actions are recorded, 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 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 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 Talent Vs Upwork
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 claims to do. The user interface is clean and intuitive, and isn’t in any way confusing, requiring only minimal orientation for employees not familiar with the software.
However, it must be said that not all businesses might benefit fully from utilizing HubStaff. HubStaff is specially suited to modern desk tasks, 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 reality
Business owners should also not completely rely on the data that HubStaff collects to determine if their employees are being productive or not. HubStaff is simply a project management software with tools and features that will help you gauge the performance of workers 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 Talent Vs Upwork
Q: Where do the screenshots go?
A: HubStaff shops the screenshots and other information using Amazon AWS.
Q: Is there a maximum number of group members who can use HubStaff?
A: The paid programs have a minimum of two users and limit 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 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 end HubStaff tracking and have it run in the background. HubStaff doesn’t collect any data once monitoring ends.