Is your service-based business built to handle the workflow load you put on your supervisors and management team?
In 2 back to back days I saw 2 tractor-trailer trucks stuck at the same intersection. It wasn’t a coincidence. Their normal routes on a wide state highway were rerouted due to road construction. Neither made the sharp 90 degree turn on the narrow county roads and ended up in ditches with their trailers scraping the pavement. These skinny two-lane rural roads and intersections weren’t built to handle this type of traffic. The tractor-trailer incidents caused unplanned, time-consuming disruptions for normal traffic flow. As a small business owner, are you doing the same to your supervisors? Is the load on your supervisors too heavy for them to carry with the current processes and systems you have in place? It is something to evaluate in order to prevent workflow disruptions in your business.
Tough Challenges for Supervisors
Off-site employees represent special challenges for supervisors.
- Do employees show up to job sites on time?
- Do they show up at all?
- Do employees spend enough time at their tasks?
- Too much time?
- Does the work quality meet expectations?
- Are they milking the clock for more hours and overtime?
- Do they fudge handwritten timesheets?
- Is all of your equipment running well?
These daily workflow issues compound existing problems as some industries like the janitorial industry face a 200-400% annual turnover. In conversations with service company owners we hear that a supervisor is needed for every 20-25 remote employees. That’s 20-75 shifts a week that can be missed, underworked, overworked, or falsified. The results could be slim or negative profit margins and upset customers. Your supervisors need to be properly equipped with tools designed with workflow intelligence to handle the load (and possibly even manage more with optimal efficiency). We have one commercial cleaning customer in California who hired his first supervisor at the 40 employee mark. He may be the exception to the rule, but then again, he is using our clock in, clock out employee management system.
Empowering Your Supervisors With Workflow Intelligence
We designed our system to maximize management efficiencies by empowering supervisors out in the field. Our supervisor mobile app pushes to the top the most important employee issues and becomes “eyes-everywhere” for your supervisors.
- Who clocked in or out, but wasn’t GPS tracked at the job. Pull up a map to see where they were.
- Who was late to a scheduled shift (your supervisor can get a text/email alert, also).
- Who was a no-show.
- Who disabled location tracking for our employee mobile app.
Your supervisor can go one level deeper on the app to intercept overtime and job budgeting issues. We report each employee’s actual hours worked (A) and future schedules (FS). You can see below that Dan has worked 24 hours this week out of 51 total scheduled (TS) hours and is scheduled for 37.5 more hours (FS). If nothing gets rearranged Dan will be 10.5 hours over his scheduled/budgeted hours. Dennis was scheduled for 7.5 hours, but has worked 8 hours already and scheduled for 5 hours more. If that stands, he will be 5.5 hours over his budget.
Real-Time Informed Decisions
These are powerful analytics that help your supervisors make informed, on-the-go, proactive decisions that strengthen your customer relationships, and protect your company profits. With handwritten timesheets you can look at what happened last week and try to self-correct next week, but with a workflow intelligent system your supervisors can make adjustments in real-time. Then those decisions can be communicated to employees through our in-app messaging system. Real-time decisions. Real-time communication.
It’s true. Information is power. And mobile information is essential to workflow success. We are committed to building the tools to help small business owners survive and thrive. Later this year we will release the next version of our program that is designed with ultimate workflow intelligence to keep your business on the move. All the information you need will float to the top. You’re too busy to dig.
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