With the rise of online work-from-home jobs and freelancing, our notion 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 based 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 duties, in addition to screen and be aware of unwanted or prohibited activity. Apart from monitoring behaviour, it can also be used to manage any sort of workplace and make it more productive.
Monitor Productivity and Improve Coordination with HubStaff Hubstaff Vs Tsheets
HubStaff includes the features that you would expect from an employee monitoring software such as:
Online Activity Monitoring:
All of us know full well that social media kills productivity. All too frequently, a few swipes on any social media app is going to end up consuming hours of our time, even in the workplace. Checking up on important notifications from time to time is acceptable, but it’s helpful if managers know when it’s becoming a problem. HubStaff can help track if employees use an excessive amount of social media and other programs that hamper productivity.
HubStaff can take note of the sites (and even the url of the exact page) that workers see 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 is also listed.
The information is displayed neatly, and managers can see the page name of the visited pages, the url, and the time spent, all in a single glance. They can also visit the links displayed to verify if workers 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 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 it sounds too much of an invasion of privacy, then it can be set to have the screenshots be partially blurred. This way, managers can determine if workers are working on their desks rather than 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 look at the screenshots taken from their displays just so they’ll be ensured that this feature is implemented just for reasons related to work.
That said, this still has an influence on the behaviour 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 measure of employee activity. HubStaff can detect keyboard strokes and mouse interaction and discover times of inactivity where none of those instances are present.
HubStaff can then compare the overall time where the mouse or keyboard is busy 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% 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. In 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 Vs Tsheets
Working overtime is also becoming more of a norm, even so in countries like Japan where it is an unofficial standard. Reasons can vary from employees wanting to complete their tasks early, catch up on jobs, and some are only workaholics who wish to be running as much as possible.
However, it’s been proven that too much work could be harmful as creativity and productivity declines without enough rest. There’s a great reason why there is a regular 8 hours of work each day.
HubStaff can help managers monitor if employees are working a lot of hours each week. They can set the maximum time every week that employees can stay logged on for work. After the maximum time has been reached, then the time monitoring tool stops. This way, workaholic tendencies are curbed, and that workers won’t be given the incentive to put in a lot of time to work and sacrifice rest and personal time.
Monitor the Location of Workers
Managers working with remote teams might find it tough to communicate and coordinate 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 difficult if workers are commuting from 1 place to another, or if they are doing field work.
Members of the group can install HubStaff in their telephones so that the employee location monitoring feature can be used. 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 much time is spent on each location. From these data, managers can determine the best time to do quick meetings.
As this requires employees to install HubStaff in their phones, this may be seen as overly intrusive of a tool. But same as the rules on iOS and Android programs, employees will know exactly 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 provide a report on the status of every job on a weekly basis. On the staff dashboard, managers can view each individual employee’s working hours and a summary of the completed and uncompleted tasks. The dashboard also shows whether employees are online.
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Payroll, Timesheets, and other Miscellaneous Features Hubstaff Vs Tsheets
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 function as a virtual 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 very 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 record of working hours and wages is also made easier. HubStaff’s citizenship handling 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 Customers Hubstaff Vs Tsheets
Becoming transparent to clients is key for establishing trust for your business. HubStaff makes it easy to communicate with customers, as well as 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 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 tracking 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 as it might make a feeling of distrust between managers and staff members. To ease your mind, you can be certain that HubStaff lets the entire team know of the whole monitoring system. Employees can be sure that their actions are monitored only during work hours, and exactly how they’re being tracked.
However, as a business owner or manager, it’s your duty to let your workers know beforehand that your office 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 monitoring system rather than a surveillance system. Employees can be sure that only the cases of their keystrokes and mouse actions are recorded, and not the actual keystroke that they register. HubStaff will not let managers and admins know just what 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 $10, while the Premium and Enterprise plans cost $10 and $20 respectively.
Only the Premium and Enterprise plans unlock attributes associated with payroll management. The enterprise feature includes fleet monitoring and even a concierge account.
For those who are willing to pay on an annual basis, then the cost per person per month of their paid programs will be slashed down to $5, 8$, and $16, respectively.
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Verdict Hubstaff Vs Tsheets
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 at all confusing, requiring only minimal orientation for workers not familiar with the software.
However, it has to be said that not all companies might benefit fully from utilizing HubStaff. HubStaff is specially suited to modern desk jobs, and for projects where staff members use computers for the majority of their time. Take jobs that take a lot of reading for instance, 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 ascertain if their employees are being productive or not. HubStaff is simply a project management software using features and tools that will help you gauge the performance of workers 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 Vs Tsheets
Q: Where do the screenshots go?
A: HubStaff stores the screenshots and other data using Amazon AWS.
Q: Is there a maximum number of group members that may use HubStaff?
A: The paid programs have a minimum of two users and limit of 350 users.
Q: Is implementing HubStaff in companies 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 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 tracking ends.