Tracking Problems: How Mobile Workers Cheat Companies Due to Control Technology Deficiencies
To perform a large number of tasks, participation of field workers is necessary - installation of meters, delivery, installation of equipment, cleaning of premises, assembly of furniture and other works. Controlling the quality of their work is not a trivial task for a business, but it is important for companies to know not only what employees are doing, but where they are at this moment.
Today we will talk about the problems of the traditional approach to the organization of geo-tracking.
')
What the back office staff keep back
It is rather difficult to control how an employee performs an order when going to an object - you will not send it with each boss. This gives workers opportunities for manipulation and even direct deception of the company. Here are a few options for unfair actions on their part:
- Performance of work not on technology - an employee can decide on the spot that he “knows better” how to carry out the task. As a result, important steps may be missed, and violation of technology leads to unsatisfactory results. In such cases, customer complaints arise after the employee leaves the exit - the company will have to apologize, as well as send someone who arrives and redo work. It is not profitable.
- Use of company resources for personal purposes . A classic example here is when an employee marks an order as canceled by a customer, takes a puncher, an industrial vacuum cleaner or other company equipment, and starts work. All payment goes to the master in your pocket.
- Work "by cash" - sometimes employees agree with the client about work without a check, but at a discount. In this case, the employee will receive the full amount, and the company will suffer a loss.
- Theft - in the case of companies whose business involves the transportation of various materials, the shortcomings of tracking systems allow unscrupulous employees to simply drop in somewhere and unload some of the materials (metal, sand, etc.) - and then write it off on account of their work. .
- Laziness - it also happens that the employee simply does not want to work - and here these orders need to go. The exit is simple - the on-site worker can say that he is going to the client, and he stops on the road to take a nap (real case!).
- Early completion of the working day - if the master fulfilled the order faster than expected, then in the time that was released, the dispatcher could assign him one more. It does not always fit into the plans of the employee, therefore, having already completed the order, he may not mark it in the application, go home and sit on the couch to press buttons about the performance of certain works.
If the problem of following the technology can be solved with the help of applications containing checklists and photo reports functionality — for example, the outfit cannot be closed without a photo — then it is not so easy to organize movement tracking and eliminate the related problems.
"I am at the facility" or tracking problems
Of course, GPS-beacons are often installed on service vehicles, which partially solve the problem. However, they track movements in isolation from the places of orders - as a result, it is difficult to figure out whether a traffic jam employee drives around on the way to an object or goes about his business. In addition, employees often use personal transport to move, on which to put the beacon very few people agree.
As a result, the employer has a geo-location of workers, which is in no way tied to what they were actually doing at a particular point in time. even a not very big cleaning company or a window installation service makes dozens of visits a day.
It would seem that if there is a large amount of data on movements and work performed, it is not difficult to identify fraud, but it seems so only at first glance. Without specialized tools, it is almost impossible to find in the pile of information the one that will help identify unscrupulous employees.
If there is data on movements, but there is no information on the orders taken at that time in the work, and this is not consistent with the employee’s statements about what he was doing (“went to order”, “worked”), then the data are, in fact, turn out to be useless.
Most often, businesses do not have their own resources to streamline the processing and analysis of data in order to catch careless employees in a lie. As a result, office workers simply observe the movement of tags on the map depicting field workers, but what they are doing at this moment is only known to them.
How should tracking work
In our blog on Habré, we already talked about our product - a service for controlling the field workers of Planado . Previously, we focused more on the functions of checklists and photo reports, but in the new version of the product we paid great attention to the integration of geo-tracking functions and event analysis along.
Now the system allows you to see where the employee was when he clicked on the buttons to check out, start work, suspend or complete them in his application.
In addition, information is available on how much each stage of the order took:
Now, it is much more difficult for field workers to cheat and go about their business, according to the program, while still on the order - the risk of being caught by deception grows considerably. This will allow the company to understand how long it takes to complete the work - useful information when planning a daily load. Together with the introduction of mechanisms for notifying customers about the assigned calls - for example, sending them messages that the master has left the previous order and is moving towards them - will help reduce the number of postponements. In the end - the business will earn more money.
Conclusion: what is the result of the introduction of control technologies?
According to our data, the introduction of the Planado field service management service, on average, results in a productivity increase of their work by 31%.
In addition, there is another interesting effect from the introduction of personnel monitoring software - employees who try to resist control “emerge”: they cover the lens with a photograph when taking pictures, turn off the GPS in the smartphone, etc.
Such employees bring harm to the company - they do not think about good work, but about how not to tense up once again and deceive the manager. What to do with such employees - each manager decides for himself, but, in any case, their attempts to “cheat” will not go unnoticed.
Other interesting articles about increasing the productivity of workers from the team " Latera-Planado ":
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/315656/
All Articles