The move from brick-and-mortar offices and long transportation times to more convenient mobile workspaces is one that benefits employees and employers alike. The fact is that you can move from traditional workspaces to mobile ones and reap the benefits without suffering management, compliance, truancy or productivity issues.
The trick is establishing the right goals and embracing options like mobile workforce management solutions. As it happens, the benefits offered by workforce management software address the keys to success when it comes to managers being able to exercise effective control, accountability and communication with their increasingly mobile employee bases.
How to Smoothly Transition to a Mobile Workforce
Most companies will be taking the transition from an in-house employee base to a mobile workforce is sips rather than one giant gulp: Change tends to happen incrementally in most industries.
No matter how quickly you plan on transitioning your workforce to accepting assignments via apps and tracking employees' hours and performance with workforce management software, setting SMART goals is always a good idea.
Develop SMART Goals to Compass Your Transition
SMART goals are a classical management idea and your way of bringing what has worked in the past into this brave new world of digital interconnectivity. Remember: Managers aren't going anywhere, but their duties, responsibilities, and means of communication will change.
SMART goals are ones that are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-based. The move to digital and reduction in one kind of oversight means reliance on other forms of workplace assessment.
As your ability as a manager to directly monitor your employees wanes, you'll find yourself relying more and more on quantitative performance measures, especially specific, measurable and time-based employee performance data.
Implement Workforce Management Software for Richer Data
Workforce management software affords you the opportunity to schedule the right talent in real-time, manage the availability of your entire workforce no matter your employees' locations, and gauge time and labour remotely.
Before, during and after your employees upload their work digitally through your company's app you'll be able to track their performance and determine whether their individual and collective input is improving your organization's ROI or whether corrective action's a better next step.
Newly created mobile apps and data dashboard to measure your employees' productivity over time can clue you into how efficiently individual employees are utilizing their time and whether your team is collectively meeting key performance indicators. The staff scheduling features on workplace management software can allow you to reshuffle your employees around to reward stellar performance or supplement things like understaffing.
Apply a Triage Method to Ameliorating Workplace Issues
A lot of managers wring their hands over the prospect of finding a problem early in a project but being unable to apply a timely fix. That's not an entirely irrational fear but with workplace management software you'll have richer performance data to cull from and real-time schedules to strategically juggle. When and if you do run into an issue, though, what's the next step you should take when you're dealing with mobile workers, or perhaps a mix of traditional and mobile employees?
Fortunately, a mobile workforce isn't synonymous with an apathetic or unreachable cadre of employees. What you should do when you uncover an issue is schedule a mandatory weekly meeting (for minor issues and check-ins) and have mobile workers drop by the office for more serious game plan changes. Generally shortening your review periods can also create greater accountability, communication and transparency.
