Manpower tracking is essential to ensure the steady progress of projects in the construction industry. Often, the process can be complicated and prone to errors, leading construction firms to lose a substantial amount of money. One of the reasons is inaccuracy in tracking working hours manually.
Monitoring your staff effectively will enable the business to record workers’ regular working hours and overtime hours. Adequate monitoring and overcoming manual errors will help the firm save plenty of money.
Another way to prevent manpower monitoring errors in construction is to integrate an automated tracking solution and a biometric time clock. Companies like SmartBarrel are among the top solutions for labor tracking. Check out this website to learn more: https://smartbarrel.io/subcontractor.
Ways to prevent construction team tracking errors?
This article will find out the seven significant steps to avoid workforce tracking errors and ways to improve the firm’s bottom line. Without further ado, let’s get started:
1. Prioritize reading policies
Policies are crucial for a construction firm to reduce liabilities and ensure an effective workflow. Construction managers often take policies for granted. These policies and procedures provide a direction to the firm and set proper guidelines and parameters.
It may sound like a basic guideline to managers, but business policies are vital. They promote consistency across the team to operate the construction firm effectively. Not prioritizing the business policies will hinder the entire system.
Employees prefer following the manager’s instructions since they don’t pay much attention to the plethora of written guidelines.
If the site managers are unaware of new policies, they will continue working with traditional and ineffective policies. Ultimately, it will hinder the workflow and may result in dire consequences for the business.
2. Implement automated tracker
Manual time tracking can cause mistakes when transferring data. For instance, with paper time cards, managers have to collect them from all the employees first and then manually enter the data from paper timesheets to excel sheets. This procedure creates a ground for multiple errors.
On the other hand, an automated tracking solution, such as through use of a biometric time clock, maximizes efficiency by cutting off the manual data transferring. As a result, there are low chances for errors, which will ultimately save your time and money.
3. Refine your estimation process
Construction firms know how important it is to accurately track the laborers’ progress. A poorly estimated system can cause errors leading to miscalculations. A refined estimation process means glitch-free tracking and uninterrupted project execution. An inaccurate estimation can lead to a cost overrun that drastically lowers the firm’s profit.
Therefore, it is essential to invest some time to accurately track the budget, laborer’s working hours, and required equipment. Conducting thorough research and accurate projections will help reduce errors and boost productivity.
It is better to hire professionals to improve the estimation process of the laborers and maximize the profit margin. Otherwise, the firm can integrate construction labor tracking software to provide forecasting features. It would help the construction management with all the workers’ misconceptions regarding the payments or working hours.
4. Be transparent with the workers
Being transparent about the tracking of workers among the staff leads to accuracy and eliminates errors. The manager should create a log with the teams in and out reporting. Add a section and mention the timing when workers left early and when served over time.
Before forwarding the file to the payroll department, they can share it with all your construction team. If the workers check their payment records, they can spot the potential errors and let the manager know where amendments are required. Due to this process, tracking the accurate number of hours and workers’ costs would be straightforward rather than rushing at the very last minute.
5. Spot employee time theft
Another way to avoid manpower tracking errors is to uncover employee time theft. Time theft not only leads to errors in tracking but it causes massive losses to a firm. According to the U.S Chamber of Commerce, 75% of employees report wrong working hours at least once a month.
Employee time theft may not be any physical stealing of a construction firm’s property, but it causes the firm to lose substantial resources. Therefore, spot the act of buddy punching in your workers and monitor wages closely of particular employees. The company can also monitor their working hours and keep an eye on their daily activities.
It can be challenging for the management to prove to the employee that they are buddy punching and are involved in time theft. To prevent it, ask the firm owner to create clear and concise policies, including mobile phones and social media use, break timings, and clock in and out procedures. It will make things easier for managers and workers alike.
6. Communicate effectively
Communicating effectively with your staff is key to preventing errors and creating a collaborative environment. Day-to-day conversation with construction manpower reduces the risk of tracking errors. If the management is clear about each individual’s responsibilities, roles, payments, and working hours, the workflow drastically improves.
Communication develops the understanding between managers and workers. If the bond between employees and managers is healthy, it maximizes the confidence, trust, and loyalty levels. As a result, the employers add value to the construction firm without resorting to cheap tactics such as time theft.
7. Unify the system
Gathering the data in one place eliminates the confusion and frustration. Construction firms possess massive data of their workers, and tracking them altogether through different software can cause the data to cluster up. However, accessing all the data and controlling it with just a few clicks makes the automated tracking of construction firms convenient.
The uniform system provides clarity and an opportunity for smart data collection. As a result, the business can avoid tracking errors and boost productivity.
Bottom line
Tracking the workers on a job site helps measure the efficiency and work ethic of each worker. Appropriate employee tracking improves the system and lets you monitor the workers and track their timings.
You can follow the ways mentioned above to keep your tracking process effective and error-free. Hopefully, the article will help you avoid manpower tracking errors and lead to better business operations.
