In today’s fast-paced and ever-evolving world, companies are constantly seeking new ways to increase productivity, streamline their operations, and better manage their teams. One solution that has gained significant traction in recent years is Hubstaff, a time tracking and project management software designed to help businesses effectively manage their remote teams.
With its powerful suite of features, Hubstaff has become a popular choice for businesses of all sizes looking to boost their productivity and efficiency. In this article, we will take a closer look at what Hubstaff is, how it works, and how it can benefit your business. So whether you’re a freelancer, a small business owner, or a manager looking to optimize your team’s performance, read on to learn more about this innovative tool.
Monitor Productivity and Improve Coordination with HubStaff What is Hubstaff?
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 frequently, a few swipes on any social networking app is going to wind up consuming hours of our time, even at work. Assessing 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 workers use too much social media and other applications that hamper productivity.
HubStaff can pay attention to the websites (and even the url of the specific page) that employees see during work hours, in addition to the time they spend on it. Traffic from applications can also be tracked and the time spent on them is also listed.
The data is displayed neatly, and managers can see the page title 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 workers really are letting time slide on sites unrelated to work.
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Screen Monitoring
Tracking individual displays is too much of a hassle and can be very awkward if done personally. But then, it’s necessary for when a remote workplace setup is in order where it’s impossible to manage employees in person.
HubStaff has a feature that could enable managers to take screenshots of the employees’ screens at a customizable time interval, with 10 minutes as the default option. If this sounds too much of an invasion of privacy, then it could be set to have the screenshots be partly blurred. In this way, managers can determine if workers are working on their desks instead of playing games or watching movies, without exposing possible sensitive information.
It should be noted that workers would understand that this feature is activated on their displays. Employees would also be able to view 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 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 total time spent working. HubStaff considers 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 shows the productivity rate of each 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 What is Hubstaff?
Working overtime is also becoming more of a standard, even so in countries like Japan where it is an unofficial standard. Reasons can range from employees wanting to complete their tasks early, catch up on jobs, and some are just workaholics who wish to be running as much as you can.
However, it’s been proven that too much work can be detrimental as creativity and productivity declines without enough rest. There’s a good reason why there is a regular 8 hours of work every day.
HubStaff can help managers track if workers are working too much hours each week. They can set the maximum time each week that workers 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 Employees
Managers working with remote teams might find it hard to communicate and organize 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’re doing field work.
Members of the team can install HubStaff in their smartphones so that the employee location 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 places 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 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 precisely 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 offer a report on the status of every project on a weekly basis. On the staff 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 What is Hubstaff?
Aside from tracking 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 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 system manually for breaks.
With HubStaff, keeping a list 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 period.
Project Tracking for Clients What is Hubstaff?
Being transparent to clients is key for establishing trust for your business. HubStaff makes it easy to communicate with clients, 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 phases of the project, in addition to the completed and pending tasks.
Third party Applications Integration
HubStaff can integrate nicely with other project monitoring 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 might be wondering if using HubStaff to manage employees can be counterproductive as it may make a feeling of distrust between managers and staff 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’s 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 instances of the 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 related to payroll management. The enterprise feature comprises fleet tracking and even a concierge account.
For those people who are ready to pay on an annual basis, then the price per person per month of the paid programs will be slashed down to $5, 8$, and $16, respectively.
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Verdict What is Hubstaff?
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 promises to do. The user interface is intuitive and clean, and is not in any way confusing, requiring only minimal orientation for employees not knowledgeable about the software.
However, it has to be said that not all companies might benefit fully from utilizing HubStaff. HubStaff is especially suited to contemporary desk jobs, and for projects where team members use computers for the majority of their time. Take jobs that require 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 on top of a reading assignment in fact
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 simply a project management software with features and tools that can allow you to 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 What is Hubstaff?
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 that can use HubStaff?
A: The paid programs have a minimum of 2 users and limit of 350 users.
Q: Why 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 only based on United States laws. It’s wise 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.