Mobile employees are any employees who must travel between locations as part of their work for you. That may include delivery drivers, construction workers, repair technicians, and others. Like a remote workforce, a mobile team works away from your main office. Therefore, proper mobile employee management is essential to keep everything on track remotely.
| “Whenever your employees work outside of your office, new challenges arise, no matter why they are offsite. However, there are almost always technological solutions to help you manage these employees.” – Chris Power, CEO of Power Consulting |
For instance, 59% of frontline employees feel their internal communications are inadequate. This challenge stems from a combination of their distant locations and from the fact that these workers often work outside the regular 9-5 schedule that your office administrators follow.
To help you avoid that challenge and more, we will go over our top 10 mobile workforce management tips. These tips may help you increase productivity and enhance efficiency for all of the mobile work that your company performs.
10 Best Practices For Effective Mobile Workforce Management
1. Establish Clear Expectations
Start by setting clear policies and expectations for your mobile workers. Instead of micromanaging a dispersed team, focus on setting clear outcomes and scheduling regular check-ins to keep things on track. For instance, you might require technicians to send a quick update after each job.
Such policies promote consistency and being upfront about expectations encourages accountability. By clearly communicating these expectations, you ensure your team understands their goals and how their work contributes to your organization’s success.
2. Implement Strong Communication Strategies
As mentioned, communication and collaboration are some of the biggest challenges of managing mobile team members. Mobile employees cannot simply pop into a coworker’s office to ask a question, so they need efficient communication tools to get the answers they need.
Implement mobile-friendly messaging and collaboration tools so your field teams can easily reach managers and peers from their mobile devices. Make sure information flows both ways. Encourage your in-office staff to respond quickly to avoid mistakes on the field.
3. Optimize Scheduling & Dispatching
Efficient scheduling and dispatching is vital to making the most of your mobile workforce. With teams spread across various locations and customers expecting fast service, you need smart scheduling practices to reduce wait times. Optimized scheduling means your mobile employees spend more time getting work done and less time in transit or waiting for instructions.
The right software can automate much of this process. Often, you can dynamically adjust schedules when emergencies arise or jobs run long. Plus, keeping cloud-based data on who is skilled in which areas will help you choose the right person for each job.
4. Track Performance
Setting measurable targets allows for an objective evaluation of workforce performance. Technological tools can help collect and monitor this data in real time. Many modern platforms enable field staff to log key metrics—such as arrival times, departure times, and job outcomes.
This visibility helps managers track field operations remotely and identify trends. For example, if a driver consistently takes longer than others for deliveries, managers can investigate possible route challenges or training gaps.
Here are a few example metrics you may use.
| Arrival Time | Tracks when a worker arrives at a job site. Helps ensure punctuality and provides insight into potential delays, allowing for better scheduling and efficiency. |
| Departure Time | Monitors when a worker leaves a location. Helps identify productivity patterns and ensures that jobs are completed within expected timeframes. |
| Job Completion Time | Measures the total time spent on a task. Helps identify efficiency trends and potential areas for process improvement or additional training. |
| Route Efficiency | Evaluates the paths taken to job sites. Helps managers detect delays caused by traffic patterns, road closures, or inefficient routing. |
| Customer Satisfaction Rating | Captures client feedback on service quality. Provides valuable insights into employee performance and areas that may need improvement. |
| Number of Jobs Completed | Tracks daily, weekly, or monthly task completion. Helps assess workload balance and overall efficiency in service delivery. |
| Idle Time | Measures the time spent inactive between jobs. Helps identify workflow inefficiencies and optimize scheduling for increased productivity. |
5. Prioritize Cybersecurity
Like remote employees, mobile employees are at a higher risk of cybersecurity incidents. This is simply because offsite workers are more likely to use insecure networks to connect to your main office.
So, establish strict security protocols and provide the tools and training workers need to follow them. Start with basics like requiring strong passwords and enabling two-factor authentication on all work apps and devices. After all, 35% of incidents stem from employees, usually due to a simple error, not malicious intent.
Additionally, set clear policies about data access. Give mobile staff access only to the systems and information they need for their job and consider providing a VPN. This way, any threats that do end up on their devices are less likely to spread across your network.
| Learn More About How You Can Enhance Security |
6. Ensure Employees Have The Right Tools
Your mobile workforce can only be as effective as the tools and technology they have at their disposal. It’s crucial to equip employees with the right hardware, software, and access to do their jobs efficiently on the go. At a basic level, this means providing reliable mobile devices.
Beyond hardware, consider the software and support tools your mobile staff needs. This might include cloud-based project management or CRM apps, GPS navigation tools for drivers, digital forms for data collection, or secure mobile access to your company intranet.
Remove barriers by ensuring everything is as mobile-friendly as possible. Interfaces should be easy to use on a small screen and not heavily reliant on desktop-only functionality.
7. Use Cloud-Based Document & Data Sharing
When your workforce is constantly on the move, they’ll need to be able to access information anytime, anywhere. This is a challenge for on and offsite employees. 48% of workers report that they struggle to find the documents they need.
Embrace cloud-based document and data sharing so that your mobile employees can retrieve and update the files they need in real time. Moreover, cloud platforms create a single source of truth for documentation. There’s less risk of losing paperwork or working off an outdated PDF. This level of real-time data sharing means your mobile staff won’t be left out of the loop.
8. Upskill Continuously
Offer comprehensive training programs to ensure mobile workers are well-versed in the tools and technologies they use. For example, a delivery company might have short monthly training videos covering their mobile app’s newest features.
Keep the training practical and relevant to their day-to-day challenges. Field employees will value learning that helps them solve problems they encounter in real life. Also, consider cross-training employees in multiple skills so they can cover for each other or handle a wider range of tasks.
9. Promote a Strong Company Culture
To keep your mobile workforce engaged and motivated, you must actively cultivate a strong company culture that reaches across distances. This could be as simple as a casual video call once a month where the team catches up on non-work topics.
Also, ensure that important company news and updates reach the mobile team at the same time as everyone else. This will both make them feel more included and ensure that how they perform on the field reflects your most current policies.
10. Leverage 24/7 IT Support Services
Provide your mobile team with easy access to technical support whenever they need it. This could mean a dedicated IT helpdesk line or chat that field workers can reach during extended hours.
You don’t necessarily need two separate IT support desks for mobile and non-mobile staff. Simply search for a managed IT support provider who can offer 24/7 services. Such a provider will be able to support staff at any time of day, or if they are in a distant location with a different time zone.
| Find The 24/7 IT Support That Your Team Needs in NYC | ||
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Maximize Mobile Workforce Management With Expert IT Solutions
Managing a mobile workforce effectively is all about balancing flexibility with structure. A well-managed mobile workforce can respond faster to customer needs, cover a wider territory, and often achieve higher productivity. The key is to use the right mobile workforce technology to keep everyone connected.
Power Consulting is a trusted IT partner that specializes in technology-driven solutions for modern businesses. We help organizations implement the tools and strategies they need to enhance their mobile workforce management. That includes cloud migrations and management, mobile device management, and after-hours IT support.
Reach out to us today to tell us about your needs.
