Day-to-day workforce management

Anna Turner underlines the importance of sharing information for company and team success.

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In the January/February issue I wrote about how to look after staff by engaging, understanding and supporting them. In this article the focus is on the day-to-day practicalities of running a team.

Managing a mobile workforce comes with some unique challenges, the most obvious being that it's impossible to be with them 24/7. As a result, communication is key to managing a team. You must invest in systems that streamline communication throughout your business in order to run it smoothly.

Set them up for success

You need your team to be productive so you need to set them up with everything they need to be productive. Build a streamlined process for sharing all the information they require to carry out the work.

For a landscape-construction project that includes:

• Up-to-date plans

• The contract (you can remove sensitive information, even the prices, but the foreman needs to know what the client has agreed to)

• All subbie and supplier quotes

• SWMs, and

• Any other information relative to the job.

Luckily, we have tools like Dropbox and Google Docs to make sharing easier, but that’s not enough. You must create a procedure for handing that information to the team. The more thorough the handover, the smoother the job will run. When the foreman has the answers at their disposal, they’re far less likely to call you unnecessarily or get steamrolled by the client.

A well-informed foreman will save you time and money.

Communication is key

Find a project-management app (or two) that works for you and put it to good use.