Nobody wants to be a bad boss. We want employees to feel happy about what they’re doing, because that’s when they’re most productive. But also because, despite the rumours, managers are humans too.
So if your company is considering a move over to a mobile workforce management system, you’ll probably have pondered how your employees may react.
And the feature that makes MyMobileWorkers so powerful – the ability to track mobile workers and their movements – is also something that can trigger off ‘bad boss’ early warning alarms.
Because when you talk about electronically tracking, it’s prone to conjure up thoughts of shouty media stories about Big Brother and the surveillance state. But it really shouldn’t.
Rather than causing an oppressive atmosphere in which mobile workers feel they’re being constantly monitored – it can actually do the opposite.
The new open plan
When you think about it, being able to check on mobile workers location is really no different to an office manager being able to glance around an office to see what’s going on.
It’s the reason that open plan offices were first developed in the 1950s, to allow for much better communications and a more fluid way to manage employees. It just made sense.
Thanks to technology, what mobile workforce management systems are now doing is bringing these exact same benefits to organisations who manage field workers. It’s the equivalent of switching on the lights of a virtual office to see who’s doing what.
By having real time communication with mobile workers and in turn, improving transparency, it’s able to defuse that sense of paranoia that can easily breed when managers have no way of knowing where workers are or what they’re doing.
Easier communication
For mobile workers, it means there’s less likelihood of having to deal with frazzled calls from bosses demanding to know where they are. It also allows employees to be used much more effectively – less wasted journeys, more realistic scheduling and a boost to mobile workforce productivity.
And while the idea of being tracked may still be resisted by some, it’s something that as a society, we’ve generally started to accept. Anybody who owns a smartphone already has their movements tracked to a certain extent.
Many of us are comfortable to use a host of different apps and online services which rely on knowing where we are – that includes all the big hitters like Facebook, Google and Twitter.
So there’s really no need to worry about the move to mobile workforce management. If employees are kept informed about how the system works and the benefits it brings – there’s no need for your photo to make an appearance on the staff dartboard.
Find out how to switch to a mobile tracking system without the kick back from staff:
