How to Better Manage Your Field Employees
Service-based businesses in today’s world operate based on a different model than has been used in the past. In our day and age, these businesses have a central office or headquarters and they have a team of field employees who literally work “in the field”. This means that these members of staff do not work in a traditional office setting but instead perform work and carry out services at their client’s homes or offices.
Because of the changing nature of the way in which work is carried out, there necessarily needs to be a new way to manage such field service employees better.
But how can you do this and what steps should you follow? This article explores the answers to these questions in more detail below.
How do you manage a field service team?
Field service employee management is a term that is increasingly being used to describe employees who work more regularly outside the office as opposed to within it.
But with so many members of staff outside the office, how do you know that they’re at their appointments on time? Or that the service they’ve provided meets your organisation’s standards?
This is where field employee monitoring comes into play and it’s essential to follow the steps below to improve management and get better performance.
1. Understand your field employees’ needs
Field employees hardly ever sit in front of a computer for hours at a time. Instead, they deal with different clients face-to-face and they use their unique skill set to ensure that a high quality level of service is provided.
Because they don’t have easy access to additional support on the spot and because they often work alone, this poses unique challenges and needs for your field employees, which need to be addressed.
Understanding and dealing with these needs can help you improve your employees’ productivity and boost customer satisfaction. In order to address such needs, it’s important to have a clear understanding of what your field employees need.
You can create a list of their needs and expectations by using forms, surveys, interviews and one-on-one discussions with them to get a greater understanding of how you can help them perform their duties better.
2. Set clear expectations and goals
When you know what your field employees’ needs are, you’re in a better position to create clear expectations and goals. After all, every organisation works according to some form or objectives and key performance indicators to measure their performance. The same should be true for your field employees. When they have clear expectations of what they need to achieve while in the field, they will be able to perform better.
This is a good way of helping them understand their roles and responsibilities better and what you expect their performance to be like. In order to set clear goals and expectations, make sure that these are specific and measurable and that you set aside time for regular feedback and evaluation for how to improve service provision even further.
3. Use technology to streamline communication and management
Technology has undoubtedly become a major part of our lives and it is also making its way to service businesses through the implementation and use of field management software.
A perfect example of field employee tracking software is ServiceOS. One of the field management software’s undeniable benefits is enabling owners or managers to schedule and dispatch the right employees to the right location at the right time.
However, there are many other benefits to help increase efficiency, productivity and data tracking. These include live location tracking, price changes on site, performance monitoring and providing a personalised service experience.
4. Delegate jobs fairly
Even though every member in your field team may have different sets of abilities, skills and experience, you need to ensure that you are delegating tasks and jobs fairly.
This means that you don’t have cases where one member of your team is overloaded with difficult tasks while another member has one or two relatively easy tasks to complete.
By not delegating jobs fairly, you’re likely to cause resentment and tension between your field employees and this can affect the team’s morale.
However, with the right technology at your fingertips, you’ll be able to streamline the allocation of jobs more efficiently and effectively and boost everyone’s levels of productivity.
5. Offer clear and direct feedback
Businesses are constantly developing and expanding and with this comes the need to constantly improve service provision. Without the direct input and involvement from your field employees, however, this can be a difficult task.
This is why it’s essential to gather and collate feedback from customers about each member of your team’s performance and look to create measurable and actionable improvements.
This should be done through communicating with each field employee as you offer them feedback that is clear, measurable, actionable and achievable so that they can continue to provide a great service while enhancing the service offering where possible.
6. Provide training and development opportunities
Despite the need for clear and direct feedback, you will also need to invest in your field employees by offering them training and development opportunities. These are critical not just for your business to help you remain competitive but also for your field employees.
This is because their ability to reskill and upskill can help them offer a more outstanding customer experience, which will ultimately boost your business’ reputation and the bottom line. It’s also a great way of staying abreast of industry changes and best practices.
Some ways you can offer these development opportunities to your employees include online courses, mentorship programmes, regular check-ins with supervisors and more.
7. Recognise and reward employee performance
Finally, it is crucial to recognise and reward your field employees’ performance because this is an essential way of improving motivation and boosting job satisfaction.
There are numerous recognition and reward strategies such as bonuses, public recognition as well as opportunities for career advancement.
This is an excellent way to help retain top-performing talent while encouraging and fostering a positive work environment and company culture.
Concluding thoughts
Managing your field employees can seem like a daunting task but it doesn’t have to be with the right tools and technology at your fingertips. With ServiceOS, you can streamline your field operations and better manage both your employees outside the office as well as the jobs and services that are performed.
Streamlining your operations will mean greater levels of efficiency and productivity and is also an excellent way to help improve your customer experience and ultimately the bottom line.
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We hope this post was helpful to you! If you have any questions, please let us know in the comments section below!