There are many pitfalls that arise when it comes to managing a mobile workforce. This is mainly due to the fact that constant physical supervision of them cannot be maintained. To keep your productivity levels high and keep customer satisfaction at a high level, you must be fully aware of their needs and there must be a solution for seamless and constant communication between office and field staff.
There are many differences between field staff and office workers, and identifying them is one of the best ways to figure out what needs to be done to manage your mobile workforce.
Field staff obviously cannot be physically supervised by a manager, as this would mean that each staff member away from the office would need their own personal manager. This lack of oversight means that some trust must be placed in mobile workforce personnel. Although many companies like to feel that they can trust employees, the fact is that in order to make a mobile workforce as efficient as possible, they need constant monitoring and the use of technology so that work is assigned and approved accordingly. quickly and without problems.
There are several ways to get the best out of your field staff. These points relate to managing a mobile workforce without the use of technology; these points are useful when deciding what type of mobile workforce management system or service management systems should be implemented.
· Ensure clear and accurate work lists are provided to staff. They need to know exactly where they are going, what to do, arrival times, and other important information such as what tools/equipment are needed.
· Knowing the location of staff is vital to ensure high levels of efficiency. The only real way to know this at any given time is by using vehicle tracking systems that run via GPS.
· Checklists and job lists are important for field staff to ensure they know their daily or weekly jobs. They are usually provided in a paper format to be completed with a pen. This is an old and trusted method of working, however, it drastically reduces productivity and efficiency within a company. There are a number of paper-using processes that can be eliminated with the use of PDA technology and software. This includes reducing administrative costs and time, as when a job is completed and the data entered on the PDA is sent directly to a main back-end system in the office.
We all know that managing people in general is hard work, but when most of your staff are mobile (engineers, etc.), it takes a good mix of technology and skill to keep a business running smoothly.
The Business Performance Management Forum produced a report explaining that the existing IT provision simply does not meet the challenge of managing the mobile workforce. Among the key issues it discovered were:
71% of respondents said the percentage of remote workers was increasing in their organizations.
86% said their IT departments felt increased pressure to support mobile and remote workers
41% said their companies suffered business interruptions due to ineffective support.
Other report findings found that protection against intrusions, threats and viruses is a top IT priority associated with remote and mobile workers, followed by improvements in technical support.
