#fieldreps

Pick the right employees for your team

Not every employee will fit into a field-based team. Although physical offices have their share of distractions, working in the field provides its own share of problems, and businesses should make sure their team has certain characteristics which optimize the day-to-day operations of the organization. Some characteristics employees should have are:

A strong drive to succeed

Incredible Self-Discipline

Willingness to use new technologies

Strong communication skills

Having all of these characteristics ensures that a field-based team can quickly adapt to any changes in the field, and can communicate results, potential problems and ideas with their supervisors and managers.

Give employees the tools they need

Having the right characteristics amounts to nothing if employees can’t do their job efficiently. The solutions which work for employees in the office will, more-often-than-not, be horribly inefficient for field-based teams. Having the proper field activity management software will make the entire organizational process smoother, raise morale, and help to build a business culture for workers who don’t physically interact with each other. Great field activity management software will provide the following services to its users:

Workforce Tracking: Managers who can see where their field reps are at all times will be able to monitor their employee interactions and create team accountability.

Mobile Forms: Giving field reps a way to track their interactions with customers or manage other aspects of their job is vital to keeping communications strong between the office and the field. Businesses should look for field activity management software that allows customized forms, so that each unique job can be quickly completed and accounted for.

Communication and Team Collaboration: Water cooler chats and mutual lunch breaks are not a part of the field-team work day. Missing out on both casual chatter and business talk stops any serious bonds and team spirit from building among field-based teams. A solution which allows reps to instant message with each other and post announcements will offer far more than software that doesn’t.

Bring Your Organizations Culture into the Field

To avoid making reps in the field feel isolated or lonely, field team managers should work to increase communication between co-workers, and spread the culture and values of the organization throughout the team. Field representatives miss out on many of the casual conversations and funny moments that can happen in the office and those are the moments which help build bonds between co-workers. To truly build a great team, managers can never forget that the team aspect will not come by itself. Field-based teams are quickly becoming commonplace for businesses everywhere, but leaving the office behind without thinking ahead can prove very costly. Business will see the benefits of field-based teams only if they assemble and equip those teams correctly. By following the above tips, managers and business owners can begin to develop an amazing dispersed team.

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In an article published in 2009 by Harvard Graduate School of Education, Chris Dede emphasizes that collaboration tools have become more sophisticated, allowing colleagues to interact with each other from locations across the globe without ever meeting face to face. Furthermore, Dede highlights that in today’s modern workplace, human beings work in conjunction with a tool or application, such as Field Activity Management Software, to accomplish goals that would be unachievable otherwise.  This fact is especially true of employees that work together from remote locations.

Leigh Richards’ article in “What Does Effective Communication in Organizations Involve?”, outlines five methodologies organizations can utilize to improve internal communication.  These are, effective communication by managers to employees, proper training of managers to ensure strong communication skills, awareness of available communication tools, measurement of communication effectiveness, and honesty.

Strong internal communication begins at the management level.  The success of those managers who are able to openly and efficiently communicate with employees will speak for itself.  However, those who lack these necessary skills will require coaching and feedback in order to improve.  Countless training materials are at the disposal of managers via webinars, one-on-one training, and other online resources.  Websites such as mindtools.com and alison.com are examples of online communication training tools.

As previously mentioned, digital means have widely supplemented, and in some cases even replaced, face-to-face communication.  Employees should become knowledgeable about the many modern communication tools that are available, such as social media, online forums, or software designed to help manage field teams.  Employees who are easily able to communicate with one another and with management are likely to have increased morale and feel more included in the company culture.

Setting performance standards is critical for improving communication between members of an organization. It becomes difficult to improve any aspects of a business model if measurements of effectiveness are not taken on a regular basis.  Organizations looking to improve their internal communication should first establish a framework for success.  Next, areas that need improvement should be identified.  Solutions for improvement should then be implemented.  Finally, new measurements should be taken and the cycle should repeat.  Any valuable information collected from this process should be shared with managers and lower-level employees alike in order to foster strong communication habits.

Honest communication amongst all members in an organization helps to build a solid foundation of trust.  Withholding certain information, damages company culture and can leave employees feeling excluded.  This is especially true of remote field employees who may never have the opportunity to connect with employees and managers who work from the back office.  Organizations should strive to be transparent in regards to how they share information internally, even if that information is unfavorable.

If managers and field reps are unable to partake in open and effective communication, an organization runs the risk of having high employee turnover, customer dissatisfaction, and high rates of project failure.  The tips discussed in this post provide ways for businesses to foster smart communications practices.  When employees and managers communicate efficiently and honestly, the entire organization benefits.  Moreover, an improvement in internal communications practices can strengthen customer relationships, which can in turn increase an organization’s bottom line.

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