To remain profitable, small business owners must be able to trust their off-site, remote workers. This trust begins by hiring the highest quality people and training them to do the highest quality work. The emphasis on quality, and not costs, will create a solid workforce and result in building long-term customer relationships.

William Edwards Deming was an American business consultant and statistician who was awarded National Medal of Technology in 1987 by President Ronald Reagan. One of his proven theories is illustrated below.

Quality =Results over Costs

(a) When people and organizations focus primarily on quality, quality tends to increase and costs fall over time.

(b) However, when people and organizations focus primarily on costs, costs tend to rise and quality declines over time.

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If you agree with Deming’s theory then your focus should turn to quality. You can interview and hire the best candidates, but as Deming said, “You can expect what you inspect.” This means that you need a system in place that helps you monitor and manage your remote, mobile workforce; a system that will aid in sifting the high quality employees from the ones that will dilute your staffing pool. An “inspection” system if you will. This constant sifting will ultimately build the finest workforce.

Here are 3 ways our innovative phone and web timekeeping system can help your small business build the highest quality labor force.

  1. Location, location, location. We give you 2 methods to oversee the location of your employees’ punches.  The first is our GPS tracking feature. This is a great accountability tool as your employees know they are being monitored. We track the location at clock in and out. If your employees complain about being tracked…well, to paraphrase Shakespeare, ‘he who protests too much…‘ Secondly, our Linked Phone feature will highlight those employees using unauthorized phones to clock in/out. You want your employees to use your customer site phones if possible. This ensures that they are on-site.  Go one step further and mark the phone as Unauthorized.  When an employee tries to clock into a job with an unauthorized phone, the call log will show the unsuccessful attempt and the phone number used.
  2. Keep tabs on employees who are consistently late. The Late Report will list employees who are late to scheduled jobs and the number of minutes late. Also review our Daily Schedule screen for no-shows to scheduled jobs.
  3. Catch employees who buddy punch for each other with check-in alerts. If you have suspicions about a couple of employees who work together off-site, use check-in alerts to monitor them. When you are alerted that they have both checked into a job, call one on his cell and ask him to put the other on the line. You may not catch them this time, but they will know that you have eyes on them.

These are just a few of the ways that we can help you create an employee inspection system to build the best workforce possible. As Deming noted, higher quality leads to lower costs and we think fewer headaches as well.

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