Only now are we slowly starting to come out of our homes and getting back to our jobs. Health and safety protocols have become a must, but what other measures can be taken to ensure the safety of our staff? How does a business plan for limited staff and social distancing while continuing to service their clients a safe and sanitary way? Implementing a job management software which caters for the below may just be the way forward for the service industry.
Work Remotely
A Job Management System is typically cloud-based and can be accessed from any device. This means that your entire business can be run remotely, from home, at the office or in the field. Working remotely these days is not about being able to work from home, but rather being able to continue work without direct contact with staff, customers or suppliers. This also allows for quicker response times for mobile workers who would normally visit the office to receive their job lists.
Going Paperless
Since the beginning of this pandemic, we have become a lot more aware of germs and the need to regularly wash our hands, but have you thought about your paperwork? Strange question, but one needs to be aware that the virus can be transmitted by touching surfaces, including paper. By utilising a cloud-based mobile system which allows for digitising of documents, you eliminate hand-to-hand contact. This can save time, paperwork and ensures the safety of your workers when dealing with additional safety procedures.
Questionnaires
Including mandatory checklists for staff can be easy when dealing with them face to face, not so easy when you need to keep in mind the need for social distancing and limiting contact. Creating questionnaires and checklists for your workers to complete before and after each job, such as “Have you sanitised your hands?”, is a great way to ensure safety protocols and social distancing is maintained at all levels. Recurring questionnaires can also help in reminding staff to repeat protocols, keeping both themselves and your customers safe.
Approval Methods
Just imagine, your mobile worker has attended on site and completed a job, all while maintaining safety protocols, only to take out a piece of paper and hand a pen to the customer to sign and thus destroying any good that was done in maintaining safety. Is there a way around this? How do you get a customer to sign off on a job if you can’t have them touching a pen or paper, or even the workers mobile device? Very few Job Management Systems have taken this in their stride and have included new ways for customers to approve jobs. These approval methods could be anything from an SMS, email, or even an audio recording of the customer approving the job. Approvals such as these are a major step toward the digital movement which we have been forced to take, but also allows for greater safety procedures and risk management.
If you have not done so yet, now is the best time for any service related company to work remotely, go paperless and ensure the safety of your staff and customers, all while staying connected through enhanced communication platforms. Social distancing is no longer a risk management solution for now, it is part of our future and if we do not start gearing our businesses up, we will start to see a lot of companies going out of business simply due to only basic safety procedures.