The busy summer construction season is quickly winding down. Soon all outdoor work will come to a halt as the mercury drops. The good news is the industry is poised to pick up next spring nearly where it left off in 2019. The global construction outlook shows industry growth will start to taper off in 2020, but still exceed 2019; that leaves contractors a couple months to shore up their internal processes in hopes of meeting increased productivity and ensuring long term success. So, where do you start? By adopting a paperless process of course.
According to the McKinsey Global Institute, the construction industry is one the least digitized of all industries, behind agriculture and hunting. And if you've tried to reduce paper processes in the past, you've probably felt the push-back from some of your workers. But you can't let a handful of employees stop you from moving to a completely online system.
A paperless HR system gives your employees the opportunity to log attendance, ask for time off and do evaluations right from the job site, or anywhere else on the globe.
1. Time and Attendance Tracking
Time off requests given on scraps of paper are asking to get lost. A paperless, cloud-based time and attendance software allows employees to enter their time and request vacation through a simple automated module, putting the responsibility on them, not the manager. An online system can be accessed with any mobile device like a phone, tablet or desktop computer. Employees can also see how much time off they have and if their requests have been approved.
2. Employee Evaluations
Your employee evaluations are probably the one area where you're still using a lot of paper. Getting your employees to sit down with a supervisor for an evaluation is likely the only way you see to get them to participate. But even if you have employees that won't adapt to a paperless system, they can still sit down with a manager and use a tablet for the evaluation. The information will go directly into the system, with no pieces of paper having to be filed or lost.
Paper files can slow you down when it comes to making money. Think about all the stacks of paper and hard files you must sort through every time you want to bid for a job or hire/promote an employee. Even if you have the most organized filing system on the planet, it can't populate data as fast as a cloud-based solution.
3. Development and Succession Planning
A paperless system like Core HR, comes with an employee scorecard that allows managers to view all of their employees' strengths and weaknesses, laid out, side-by-side. Managers have the ability to develop plans for employees who may be lacking in one area or provide off-season training to get them up to speed. The scorecard also gives insights for succession planning, as you can see the holes in your employee base that will potentially need to be filled.
4. Job Bidding
These same scorecards give a complete view of the expertise your employees provide so you can accurately prepare job bids. Do you have employees who can get the materials in on time? Do you have enough employee expertise for a small job? Or, will you have to subcontract?
5. Building Up Your Employee Base
A paperless applicant tracking system works to hire employees 24/7. It stores past applicants for easy reference, it automatically posts to hundreds of online job boards and can even utilize your current employees by implanting an employee referral program. Effective employee referral programs can expand your talent pool by 10 times.
BirdDogHR provides a complete, online, cloud-based paperless solution for all your HR needs. We started in the construction industry and understand your challenges better than any other software company. Fill out our Free HR Assessment to see where you stand and how we can make your next season the most successful yet.