If you run a staffing agency where you’ve got a lot of temporary workers taking on a different range of jobs, you already know that in myriad different ways, time is money. You can lose or make money based on how efficient you are at lining up the right temp worker with the right task, and you can lose or make money depending on how well you track worker activity and make sure they accurately clock in and out while completing their tasks.
Administration of workers, especially ones that are mobile and being dispatched to many different locations, can be a huge challenge. However, if you use the right kind of time card and/or workflow management software, you can boost the operations and efficiency of your staffing agency. Here are three ways that this happens.
Efficient Task Delegation
One of the most important ways that a timecard or workflow management software can help is in ensuring that the assignment of tasks is a smooth, centralized experience, where everyone is on board and knows what’s going on. When properly implemented, you can avoid redundancies like two workers showing up for the same job, both of them thinking they accepted the job, due to a miscommunication.
A centralized workflow system ensures that available jobs are viewable to all, but once someone accepts that job, it is removed from the “board,” and no one else can accept it. Once a job is accepted, admin is automatically notified of who accepted and when so appropriate staff are always in the loop.
Accurate Task Management
Good workflow software doesn’t just let you efficiently manage who is taking on a job; it also lets you be as detailed as you need to regarding the nature of the job. For temp staff that may not know all the ins and outs of how you prefer to work, you can leave detailed notes, such as what supplies and which supplier to go to pick up what’s needed.
You can also include detailed notes about what you want to see happen, such as taking a picture of the work once it’s finished and including that as an attached photo when reporting a task is completed. Moreover, of course, thanks to the nature of this software residing in a downloaded app on the phone, you can also include navigation instructions for how to get to the suppliers and the worksite, complete with an estimated time of arrival so everyone knows how long it should take to get to the destination.
Clocking In & Out
Of course, perhaps the most important part of a good timecard and workflow software is the timecard aspect itself. Clocking in and out is an essential technique for ensuring that people get paid for the time they’ve put in. However, keeping this neat and organized can be a challenge, and, unfortunately, there are people who sometimes attempt to game the system and fraudulently clock in hours they haven’t earned.
A time card software system ensures that even if a person isn’t at the home office, clocking in and out can be done quickly, supervised and approved by admin, and correctly filed when the work is done. It takes the basic idea of the old fashioned, analog clock in systems and makes it much faster, more convenient, and more efficient and honest for everyone involved.
