Employee monitoring software that makes work visible without sacrificing trust
Get a clear view of remote and hybrid work with app and URL usage, optional screenshots, and real-time activity data. Understand productivity, support compliance, and strengthen accountability.
Hubstaff is a great tool for businesses that operate remotely because it gives accountability to employees and streamlined tracking capabilities for the managers.
What sets Hubstaff apart from other employee monitoring tools?
Hubstaff combines privacy-first, configurable employee monitoring with productivity insights. Set monitoring policies by role, team, or device, and review activity in context while giving IT stronger controls. Gain clearer operational insights and give HR a transparent monitoring framework.
Invasive monitoring vs. Hubstaff’s approach
Balance workplace privacy with monitoring through ethical employee monitoring practices that enable contextual, transparent tracking and adopt a monitoring vs. surveillance approach.
| Category | Invasive monitoring | Hubstaff's approach |
|---|---|---|
Data collected | Keystroke logging, screen recording, monitoring of private communication, webcam, and audio recording | Time, activity levels, apps and URLs used, and optional screenshots |
Transparency | Entirely hidden tracking that employees may not know about | Transparent start/stop timer on personal devices; policy-based tracking on company-owned devices shared with your team |
Control | Data capture with no flexibility for role-based customization | Flexible settings by role, team, or device, with the option to set role-based permissions for data access |
Trust | Damages employee morale, resulting in disengagement | Activity tracking based on context to balance workloads, not to watch every minute |
Legal risk | Collects personal data that's hard to justify and secure under privacy laws | Encrypted data and audit-ready records that support compliance with SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA, GDPR, LGPD, and CCPA requirements |
Manager time | Time spent reviewing recordings and raw work logs | Intuitive dashboards and reports that summarize contextual work insights |
Key features of employee monitoring software
See how work happens across teams, roles, and regions, with controls that support privacy and compliance.
Built on time tracking
Time tracking ties every task, project, and team to a verifiable audit trail. Screenshots, app and URL usage, idle time, and workforce analytics data support compliance and help answer auditor requests.
Employee tracking
Track how employees work across Mac, Windows, Linux, web, and mobile. View hours, attendance, PTO, and earnings in one centralized dashboard, with optional GPS tracking for field teams.
Optional screenshots
Use optional screen monitoring to add visual context when needed. Disable, blur, or customize screenshot frequency to match your company's policy, and set permissions by role or team.
Computer and internet usage monitoring
See which apps and websites are in use during work hours, along with activity levels to gauge keyboard and mouse input frequency, not what someone types. Categorize apps and URLs as productive, non-productive, or AI to understand how work happens.
Privacy-first activity monitoring
Hubstaff doesn’t record keystrokes, access the content of emails or messages, activate webcams, or record audio. Teams get visibility into work without collecting more information than they need.
Audit-ready controls and reporting
Hubstaff meets SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA, GDPR, LGPD, and CCPA standards. Configurable permissions, detailed reporting, and workforce analytics tied to time logs keep you ready for audits and security reviews.
Trusted across industries and team types
Hubstaff's employee monitoring capabilities give remote, distributed, and hybrid teams consistent visibility into work progress and productivity. Over 140,000 users rely on Hubstaff to standardize trust, accountability, and compliance.
How to use Hubstaff for employee tracking
Download the Hubstaff employee monitoring app
Users can install Hubstaff’s desktop, mobile, or web apps for Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, or Android. Monitoring features are optional and fully customizable for desktop users, while the mobile app offers time tracking and GPS location tracking for distributed teams.
Customize monitoring features with transparency
Managers can enable or disable, blur, or adjust the frequency of monitoring features like screenshot capture, and customize app and URL usage, activity levels, and more. These built-in privacy controls ensure visibility and accountability, while sharing your monitoring policy with the team before rollout promotes ethical monitoring.
See real-time data and review reports
Meet compliance requirements with detailed reports covering time, activity, and productivity insights, keeping you ready to tackle audits whenever they happen. Scale with standardized workforce management across every team, department, and region, while giving managers visibility into work and employees transparent access to their own data.
Choose the right deployment for your team
Implement employee monitoring with flexible tracking policies that specify what data is collected and when, and support privacy settings and permissions aligned with device types.
Hubstaff’s guiding principles
Monitoring features are built to add visibility into employee performance for both individual contributors and their managers. Use this performance data to inform staffing, compliance, or client reporting decisions while users gain transparency into what’s being tracked and how the data will be used.
How Hubstaff supports secure and transparent employee monitoring
Storing screenshots
Storing screenshots
Optional screenshots are stored encrypted and transmitted via SSL over HTTPS. Employees can open and review their own screenshots at any time, so there's never a question about what's been captured.
Employees can view and manage their own data
Employees can view and manage their own data
On personal devices, employees decide when to start and stop tracking time. They can view their own activity levels, apps and URLs used, and screenshots—the same data their managers see. Employees can also delete time entries and screenshots containing personal information when needed.
Monitoring during work hours only
Monitoring during work hours only
Hubstaff tracks time and activity only while the timer is running, collecting no data outside of active work sessions on personal devices. On company-owned devices, tracking is admin-configured and employees are informed of the monitoring policy in place.
Employee monitoring resources
Employee monitoring laws
Stay current on monitoring laws in your state, country, or region and build policies that support compliance.
Ethical employee monitoring
Learn how to balance visibility, privacy, and trust when introducing monitoring to your team.
Monitor internet activity
See responsible ways to review app and website activity while keeping team trust intact.
Desktop monitoring in context
Understand what desktop activity data shows, and why it works best alongside other performance context.
Hubstaff vs. Insightful
Compare features, pricing, and privacy controls side by side to see which tool fits your team best.
My people need to document their work so that I can have visibility into what they did during the day. Using Hubstaff reduces the meeting time I needed and gives me clarity into what was done and what wasn’t.
Affordable Staff turned to Hubstaff to manage and pay contractors and freelancers, streamlining operations as it grew. It saves $170,000 annually thanks to our platform.
We use Insights to ensure workloads are balanced across the team, preventing burnout. If someone is overworked, we can adjust assignments to maintain productivity without overwhelming them.
Hubstaff automatically gathers all company information — hours tracked towards projects and budgets, for example — and builds custom reports.