Hubstaff: Manage Time and Workforce Digitally at Your Fingertips
Top 10 CEOs Making a Difference in 2023
Time tracking and productivity are two major aspects that make work simple. Even the management prefers that these aspects work excellently in the organization. Keeping track of these two has changed from ‘pen and paper’ to ‘virtual data’ in the past few decades.
In this digital era, many software help collect data and make strategies to perform well as an organization. However, putting them to use is not very convenient, and only a few professionals can operate them. To address these issues, Hubstaff was established. Hubstaff provides a software suite of products according to the usage or requirements of its clients.
With more than 10,000 teams across the world and over 40,000 live customers, they are developing productivity and workforce management through their software suites.
Jared Brown, Co-Founder, and CEO of Hubstaff founded the solutions to make workforce management smooth to get quality outcomes. The team of Hubstaff keeps upgrading itself to be one step ahead in the market.
Recently, Business Leaders Review had a conversation with Jared about the idea of making excellent software and how he improves the user interface (UI) to be more understandable.
Below are the highlights of the interview:
Please brief our audience about Hubstaff, its USPs, and how it is currently positioned as one of the most reliable companies in the time-tracking solutions space.
Hubstaff is a complete workforce management solution built around core time tracking and productivity features. Since 2012, teams of all sizes across virtually every industry have used Hubstaff to track time, create timesheets, assign to-dos and projects, administer payroll, schedule their teams, and monitor remote employee activity. Today 40,000 businesses trust Hubstaff with more than just time tracking, but to manage their field and remote teams from delegating assignments and jobs to sending payments.
Tell us more about Hubstaff and how its distinct offerings are impacting the industry and its clients. What makes Hubstaff stand apart from the competition?
Teams of all sizes and verticals find various solutions within the Hubstaff software suite of products.
As brick-and-mortar offices transitioned suddenly to remote work, they found Hubstaff as a way to keep a pulse on the team and manage their time and workload.
Hubstaff’s powerful software suite has helped entrepreneurs launch and grow businesses globally, with employees from around the world by providing proof-of-work features and payroll that works for everyone.
Businesses and managers with field teams utilize Hubstaff’s unique job sites feature to automate clock-ins and outs of their members, significantly reducing the risk of buddy-punching, forgetting to clock in, and altogether inaccurate time tracking.
Aside from these features, we also believe that the three pillars Hubstaff was built on set us apart in a fundamental way. The team here at Hubstaff takes pride in our core values of Transparency, Access, and Control. Employees have access to all their data; our software does not run in the background unknowingly and collect information the team member cannot access about their work.
Jared, please tell our readers about you, your journey, and how you have helped raise Hubstaff to the heights of prominence it is at today.
I have always been interested in tech startups. Growing up, I had a lot of ideas for new businesses. But since I couldn’t afford to hire developers, I taught myself how to program and design web pages in high school. Once I graduated, I attended Purdue University and received a bachelor’s degree in computer science. After I got my degree, I briefly tried my hand at starting a business. It developed inventory management software. But I quickly realized I needed to get some experience at other successful companies. I worked for two startups and freelanced for a few clients over the next several years.
With those experiences under my belt, I felt confident that I was ready to try starting a business again. That is when my Co-founder approached me, and we started Hubstaff. I believe we have been successful because of the experience we both brought to the table. That, coupled with our relentless drive to iterate on the software and keep adding features to it, got us to where we are today.
Being an experienced leader, share your opinion on how advanced technologies have impacted the need for time-tracking technologies and software.
It is no secret that software is eating the world. Functions that were previously done with pen and paper are moving into the digital era. This means that companies are rapidly adopting specialized software for just about every aspect of their business functions. Time tracking and workforce management software are at the heart of this. Companies are waking up to the need to streamline their management processes and look for insights into their workforces.
What efforts did you take during the pandemic to sustain operations and ensure the safety of your team at the same time?
Hubstaff has been a fully remote company since day one, and we use the tools we build every day to manage projects and our team. We already had the infrastructure in place for Hubstaffers to continue working during quarantine from the safety of their homes.
However, just like millions of others, many of us were struggling with pandemic-driven anxiety, challenged with balancing children at home when schools closed, and some of us got the virus. So, to help the team cope with these emotional stresses, we found it even more crucial to provide a supportive environment where no one felt threatened if they needed to take some time off or shift around their typical work schedule.
We facilitated remote retreats so the entire company could shut work down and enjoy the day(s) with our work friends with scavenger hunts, cooking classes, video games, and wellness talks with guest speakers. We became a closer and more compassionate team.
As an established industry leader, what would be your advice to budding entrepreneurs and enthusiasts aspiring to venture into the technology sectors?
My number one piece of advice is not to get married to your first idea. Come up with a list of concepts and the criteria by which you plan to evaluate them. Make them prove their merits to you. Because once you pick one, you are going to be committed to it. There is a high opportunity cost to picking a bad idea. So, it is very important to base your decision on data and a checklist of criteria.
My second point of advice would be to start your business in your twenties. Spend a few years building up your experience after college. But don’t delay starting your business for too long. When you are young, you have a lot of time and energy. You can also take bigger risks. Use that as a competitive advantage.
How do you envision scaling Hubstaff’s services in 2022 and beyond?
The Hubstaff team is working on exciting projects to level up our productivity and build new ones in 2022 and beyond. Business owners and managers will get actionable insights from the data collected automatically, and they’ll be able to see industry and role benchmarks to make more informed managerial decisions.
For 2023, we have ideas we’re baking out on how to measure and improve employee wellness using feedback mechanisms and other work-wellbeing gauges within the apps.