In the construction industry, having up-to-date knowledge about one’s colleagues and team members is essential. The managers and team leaders need to collect and analyze this data. Customer retention only happens when the employees assigned to those projects are worth their salt. It will ultimately lead to a better performance of the enterprise in the market.
Let us understand the concept of workforce visibility, its importance, and how one can increase the visibility of the employees in their organization. To know more about the importance of workforce visibility, click here.
What Is Workforce Visibility?
Workforce Visibility is the possession of complete and accurate knowledge about the employees of your enterprise. While the employees are working in different departments of the organization, they all function simultaneously as a company. Therefore, being visible in the workforce requires business operations to function smoothly.
One should have a hold over information like the size of your workforce, how many employees are there in each department, their recent performance reviews, what clients they are currently working with, their past projects, etc.
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Why Is Workforce Visibility Important For An Organisation?
After having understood what workforce visibility means, let’s move on further to why it is of such importance to have it in the workplace.
Intelligent and informed business decisions
Workforce visibility and proper employee tracking will help form opinions and decisions based on employees. Further, one can monitor and analyze such decisions made in the past by using workforce planning softwares like Bridgit Bench.
Customer retention
If your employees are a “perfect match” to their designated clients, you have a better chance of retaining that client for longer periods. Allocation of employees in an optimum way will allow a business to create a strong and loyal customer base. It will lead the business to reach its capacity of production.
Optimal utilization of limited resources
Since the labour resource, along with the other factors of production, is limited in nature, effectively utilizing it is a must. Without workforce visibility, team leads are more likely to make inaccurate and misguided allocation of employees, which will lead to wastage of time and other resources.
Better forecasting and planning
Proper workforce management and planning will help provide reliable insights into how many projects the business can take on in the future. The management can also plan the expansion of their customer base with the help of the forecasts provided by workforce visibility.
Tips To Improve Workforce Visibility
Now that you know why workforce visibility is necessary, here are some tips for implementing it in your organization.
Have real-time knowledge of your employees’ performance
Just like how a company tests their products within controllable conditions to know if they are working properly, a leader or manager can monitor his teammates/team members to know what their real capacities are, how well do they work under pressure, is there an idle time during their work hours, etc. This knowledge will prove effective during the appraisals of your employees too.
Know the composition of your team and their qualifications
As a manager, one should study their team minutely. Prepare a database where the information about your team members is stored. This information will comprise details about their qualifications, competencies, certifications, ability to work under pressure, how much they can work without lowering the quality of the product/service, etc.
One should also ensure that there are enough members in the team to take on existing as well as potential clients. It is to avoid the mental draining or burnout of your employees.
Ensure that there is proper communication between you and your team members
All of your team members, especially the newly recruited ones, may have various questions about the clients, the products or services, how to make a better presentation, etc. These queries should be answered promptly to make further progress.
Proper communication will help you get to know them better, thus increasing the workforce visibility in the organization. One should also focus that the team members’ communication is smooth, not just the grapevine communication.
Focus as much on the mobile workforce as the office workforce
Since the pandemic hit, a mobile workforce has been appointed in many companies across all sectors. As of 2021, 32% of Canada’s workforce is mobile in nature. In 2016, the number of mobile workers in Canada was 6%. Since the mobile workforce is somewhat harder to manage because of the distance constraint, more emphasis is to be provided on keeping them visible.
Softwares like Bridgit Bench can help make this process a lot less hectic. It helps in tracking the existing projects, tracking the skills of your employees, forecasting, etc. One can effectively manage utilization reporting and determine the productivity of their employees. Managers should warmly welcome remote workers and give incentives like gift cards or vouchers to cheer them up.
The team leader has to be inclusive of all different employees because if members do not feel that they are a part of the team, it will affect their performance.
Maintain in-depth client data along with the data of your team members
Since you possess accurate data about your team members, you can further test the visibility of the workforce by constructing in-depth data on your existing clients. It will consist of data such as their periodical requirements, any special notes, what qualities they are looking for in the product, etc.
Now, compare the requirements of the clients and the attributes of your team members to easily analyze which members should be teamed up for which projects. It is a time-saver since you don’t have to think about how to make teams for clients, and it is based on factual information.
Conclusion
We have thoroughly summed up the concept of workforce visibility in this article. However, there are many things that one only learns through experience. Workforce visibility is not just about managing the teams; it is about knowing and acknowledging their efforts as individuals and as a team. It will lead to a happier, more productive environment in the workplace, which, at the end of the day, is the ultimate goal.
