If you’re the boss of a construction business, you’ll know that it’s best to have your team or teams out on site as much as possible. If they’re there, they’re doing work and making money – if they’re in the office or warehouse, they’re not.
Photo by Anamul Rezwan
However, unless you’re physically onsite with them, you might not be entirely sure whether or not your team is as productive as they could be. That can be a worry because if they’re not working in the way you want them to, your business could suffer. They might miss deadlines, waste money, and generally cause you to have a bad reputation. Even if they’re not being unproductive on purpose, this is still going to have a big impact on what you can do with your business and how you can move forward.
Because of all this, it makes a lot of sense to make sure your onsite team is productive, and there are a few different ways you can make that happen. With that in mind, read on to find out what some of your options are.
Set Clear Expectations
Setting clear expectations for your onsite team is a fantastic way to make sure they are all as productive as possible, and it helps you to check that all the work that needs to be done will be done – to your standards too.
For one thing, when you set clear expectations, you’ll be able to make it clear when all the various deadlines are, the goals, and the overall vision the client (and you) are looking for. When people have specific things to work towards, they’ll be much more productive because they won’t have to keep stopping to ask questions, and they won’t get lost and slow down because they’re not sure what to do next or how to make the right choices when they need to.
When you have clear expectations for your team, it makes communication better and easier as well, and that’s a big part of good productivity. There will be far less confusion due to miscommunication (or zero communication, as can sometimes be the case), and that’s fantastic because it means the work gets done right the first time, saving you money and time (and your reputation) compared to if you had to re-do anything.
On top of that, if you offer clear, well-defined guidelines for everyone to do what they need to do, they’ll all be more accountable because they’ll know what’s expected of them. If they want to do a good job, they’ll work towards their own goals and be more productive as a result.
Training And Development
Training and development are also crucial when it comes to ensuring your onsite team is going to be as productive as possible and keep your construction business running smoothly. Although you’ll usually have to pay to have this training carried out (and even if you do it yourself, that’s time you could be spending doing other important things for the business, so it will still be a cost), once the training is complete, your team will be much more confident and knowledgeable about the job they need to do, and that leads to a lot more productivity.
Training gives your team useful skills that they might not have had before (like leadership and decision-making), and they can add these to the practical skills you hired them for, ensuring that they can deal with problems and challenges themselves, rather than having to wait for you, or another member of the management team, to help them. This will speed things up, and help to make everything a lot more productive.
Your team will also be a lot more adaptable if they’ve had plenty of training because they’ll be able to use their skills and knowledge to deal with new technology, processes, and even industry trends quickly and easily, making your clients very happy in the process. Plus, don’t forget that training should be an ongoing thing because it helps your team work together, keeps them up to date, and shows that you trust them to do the work you need them to do. All of that adds up to a lot more productivity.
Management Software
If you can’t be on site to manage your team firsthand, what can you do to ensure they are being as productive as possible? One of the best solutions is to use specialist management software like BuildOps.
The fact is that your team will have a lot to think about and a lot of challenges to get past, from project coordination to resource management and more. Giving them the right software can make all of these things a lot easier to deal with, leading to more efficiency and more productivity. But the software isn’t just for the teams themselves; you can be included as well, and oversee everything easily, even if you’re not physically on site with the workers.
Take project planning and scheduling, for example. The right software can help make great project schedules that people can follow, and that means that all the different tasks that have to be done can be put in order of priority. Since a construction site is often seen to be like a puzzle where one piece needs to be in place before the next can be started, having management software that can help with this makes all the difference. You can also use the software to communicate with your team, from giving them the initial instructions to making changes in real time when you need to.
With the right software, your construction project can easily become a lot more productive, and since everything can be managed remotely, you’ll save time and money as well.
Incentives And Recognition
Another great way to ensure that your construction team is working as hard as possible and being as productive as they can be (and as productive as you need them to be) is to offer incentives and plenty of recognition for a job well done. These are fantastic motivational tools that will boost morale and also make your team a lot more enthusiastic about what you’re asking them to do.
Incentives, whether they’re financial, promotions, time off, or anything else, will always give your employees a reason to keep pushing forward and to get their work done on time and to a high standard – which is what you need them to do. Plus, recognition and appreciation make your team feel a lot more valued, and that’s crucial; someone who knows they’re appreciated at work will always try harder and do more than someone who doesn’t feel as though their contribution is worth much at all, if anything.
In fact, adding incentives to your team might even lead to a healthy dose of competition, which isn’t a bad thing in most cases. You don’t want things to get out of hand, but a little competition can help make everyone work harder, especially if there’s some kind of prize at the end.
The key to giving rewards like this is to actually have good rewards to give. Make sure that whatever it is you’re offering is going to be something your team wants, otherwise it’s not much of an incentive, and you might not get the productivity you’re looking for. In fact, if the reward is something that could be seen as worthless or unwanted, it might have the opposite effect and make your team a lot less productive because they’ll feel you don’t appreciate them.
Monitoring And Feedback
If you want your team to be more productive, you’ll need to help them as much as possible, but that doesn’t have to be a difficult thing to do. In fact, in some cases, it’s very easy and can even benefit your business in a variety of different ways.
One option is to engage in more monitoring and feedback for your team. When you regularly monitor what’s going on, you’ll be able to see the strengths and weaknesses of each team member, and that means you’ll be able to allocate the right tasks to the right people. In that way, everyone will be doing what they do best, and the construction project will go much more smoothly. Plus, since training is so important when it comes to productivity, when you’re assessing strengths, you can assess weaknesses as well, and then you can arrange for training and development to ensure your team’s weaker elements are made stronger. All in all, this means everyone can do the job you need them to do in the most productive way possible.
Feedback is also vital because it’s a great opportunity to give advice about how to be more productive, but also a chance to listen to your team and find out what it is they need – it might be they’re missing some training or some equipment, or they just need a bit more communication to ensure they can do the job you’re asking them to do more productively. By giving and receiving feedback, issues can be dealt with quickly, and everyone can get back on track.
