With the rise of internet work-from-home jobs and freelancing, our concept of a workplace is steadily changing. Now, our notion of a conventional workplace can be different from the rooms filled with individual cubicles that we were used to. HubStaff, a software from a company of the same name established in the United States, offers its services for traditional, remote, or even entirely online workplaces.
An employee monitoring software is used to monitor whether or not employees are keeping on with their duties, as well as screen and be aware of unwanted or prohibited 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 Wrike Hubstaff
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 networking app will end 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 managers know when it is becoming a problem. HubStaff can help track if employees use too much social media and other programs that hamper productivity.
HubStaff can pay attention to the websites (and even the url of the exact page) that workers visit during work hours, in addition to the time they spend on it. Traffic from applications can also be monitored and the time spent on these is also recorded.
The data is displayed neatly, and managers can see the page name of the visited webpages, the url, and the time spent, all in one 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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Display Monitoring
Monitoring individual screens 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’s impossible to manage employees in person.
HubStaff has a feature that can enable managers to take screenshots of the 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 could be set to have the screenshots be partly blurred. This way, managers can determine if employees are working on their desks rather than playing games or watching movies, without exposing potential sensitive information.
It must be noted that workers would understand that this feature is activated on their screens. Employees would also have the ability to view the screenshots taken from their displays just so they’ll be assured that this feature is implemented only for reasons related to work.
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 present.
HubStaff can then compare the total time where the mouse or keyboard is active 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 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 this team are working on a project at a given time.
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Work Limit Monitoring Wrike 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 jobs early, catch up on projects, and some are just workaholics who want to be running as much as possible.
However, it’s been proven that too much work could be detrimental as creativity and productivity declines without enough rest. There’s a great reason why there is a standard 8 hours of work each day.
HubStaff can help managers track if workers are working a lot of hours each week. They could set the maximum time every week which workers can stay logged on for work. After the maximum time has been reached, then the time tracking tool stops. In this manner, workaholic tendencies are suppressed, and that employees will not 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 might find it tough to communicate and coordinate the team. Some employees might be jumping from place to place for work, and also be operating from cafes or other workstations.
Setting up unplanned meetings can be difficult if employees are commuting from one place to another, or if they’re doing field work.
Members of the group can install HubStaff on their smartphones so that the employee place monitoring feature can be used. 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 much time 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 too intrusive of a tool. But same as the rules 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 job 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 shows whether workers are online.
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Payroll, Timesheets, and other Miscellaneous Features Wrike Hubstaff
Besides 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 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 worker.
Managers can also pause the system manually for breaks.
With HubStaff, keeping a list of working hours and salaries is also made easier. 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 interval.
Project Tracking for Clients Wrike Hubstaff
Being transparent to clients 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 projects. This can be simply done by adding clients into the members tab. From there, they could see the phases of the project, in addition to the pending and completed tasks.
Third party Applications Integration
HubStaff can integrate nicely with other project monitoring tools including but not limited to Asana and Trello. This is good 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 might 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 entire monitoring system. Employees can be sure that their activities are monitored only during work hours, and precisely how they’re being tracked.
However, as a business owner or manager, it is your duty to let your employees 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 monitoring system.
To put it simply, HubStaff is a tracking system and not a surveillance system. Employees can be certain that only the instances of their keystrokes and mouse actions are listed, and not the actual keystroke that they register. HubStaff will not let managers and admins know just what their employees 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.
Just the Premium and Enterprise plans unlock attributes 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 their paid programs will be slashed down to $5, 8$, and $16, respectively.
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Verdict Wrike 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 claims to do. The user interface is clean and intuitive, and is not at all confusing, requiring only minimal orientation for workers not familiar with the software.
However, it must be said that not all businesses 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 instance, 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 fact
Business owners should also not completely rely on the information that HubStaff collects to determine whether their employees are being productive or not. HubStaff is simply a project management software using tools and features that will help you gauge the performance of employees 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 Wrike 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 team members that may use HubStaff?
A: The paid plans have a minimum of two 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 site. However, these are only based on United States laws. It is wise to consult with a lawyer for international users.
Q: Can employees choose when they’re being tracked?
A: Yes, employees can manually start and end HubStaff monitoring and have it run in the background. HubStaff doesn’t collect any data once monitoring ends.