Workforce management strategies are changing every year, making finding and retaining qualified technicians more important than ever. Whether you’re looking for full-time employees or you’re open to working with contractors, there are a few management mistakes you can easily avoid to provide the best experience for you, your workforce, and your customers.
Mistake 1: Onboarding Contractors too Late
Late onboarding occurs more frequently than you would probably think. Sometimes managed service providers think it’s a good idea to send a new contractor on their first call as a test to see how well they perform. “Learning on the job” is helpful for some, but this strategy is not in your organization’s best interest. In this case, you’re making a real, paying customer a test for your potential new contractor. If anything goes wrong in this scenario, that’s going to look bad on you and your company.
How to Avoid Late Contractor Onboarding:
Ensure your contractor is vetted and well-interviewed before they go on their first customer call. Whether you need to use a third-party hiring group or a digital platform that checks their credentials and completes background checks, you need to know as much as you can about your contractors before you assign them to a project.
Mistake 2: Inefficient Billing Processes
When your contractors are in the field with customers, they should be focused on the project at hand. Whatever they’re doing for the customer should be their biggest concern, and they shouldn’t be worried about what forms and paperwork they need to fill out to ensure they’ll be paid on time. They also should be able to easily access any documentation the customer needs to see or sign during the visit.
How to Avoid Inefficient Paperwork Handling:
There’s an easy fix for this problem. Field service management (FSM) platforms let you have all of the necessary paperwork loaded into the project’s file, where it is readily accessible to on-site technicians. Further, with tracking and digital information submissions, your field workers know their information is being recorded automatically, so they can focus on the customer, rather than worrying about their payment cycle.
Mistake 3: Relying on Manual Management Systems
As technology has advanced in recent years, workforce management tools have improved, too. If your company is still using manual, or even semi-manual, management systems, chances are you could be losing productivity, time, and also money.
How to Avoid Manual Management:
By implementing a more automated workforce management tool, like an FSM platform, you save your business and your team time and money. These tools track field workers and allow them to easily upload photos of projects as they go, so you easily meet your tracking and compliance needs.
Mistake 4: Providing a Sub-Par Mobile Experience
Many field technicians expect an easy way to log hours, check in, and work with their schedules. Because they’re often on the road, it makes sense for these tasks to occur on their mobile devices. If they aren’t able to access the website easily on their phone or tablet, this leads to frustration and a negative work experience.
How to Avoid Frustrating Technology Use:
Whether it’s an easy-access website or a mobile app, ensure your field technicians can handle their HR, scheduling, benefits, and even simply the ability to punch in and out from their phones and tablets. By doing so, you keep your technicians and employees happy by creating an easier experience for them.
These are four of the biggest workforce management mistakes that companies make, but now you know the strategies to avoid them. If you need help implementing a field service management platform at your organization, contact Kinettix. We have years of experience helping companies use cloud-based FSM software to its full potential. We also help you find appropriately skilled technicians for retail IT deployments, break/fix issues, and a variety of other projects 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year — regardless of time zone.
