9 Super-Duper Ways to Manage Your Blended Workforce

Unfold in just 9 ways which tactical approaches, tools, and strategies can help you manage your blended workforce.

As a business owner, you will relate how remaining competitive and attracting top talent are two major factors for growth. In order to do that, a hybrid approach would be beneficial that lets you leverage the skills of on-field, remote, and field staff. This allows you to combine the stability of office workers with the flexibility of remote employee monitoring. 

Want to hire a blended workforce for your business? Here is your playbook with 9 tips on how you can manage them without fretting.

What is a Blended Workforce? Why Do Businesses Hire Them?

A blended workforce is a mix of traditional full-time employees along with part-time field workers, contractors, remote staff, and freelancers. Many organizations go for this mix when their work demand is seasonal or fluctuating and most importantly when their budget is limited.

This approach allows businesses to enjoy a more diverse skill set and talent, and experience cost efficiency. And the ability to quickly adapt to changing business needs and dynamic market demand.

Blended Workforce Can Become Challenging When… Hierarchies and reporting heads are not clearly defined. There is dire confusion about who has to report to whom. Teams don’t have a mutual platform to access work routines, update status, and communicate with superiors or colleagues. Nobody is tracking the task’s deadlines or progress and comparing it with certain benchmarks. All this sounds like inviting a total disaster! This is where strategic decisions and software tools as discussed below are truly important.

How to Manage Blended Workforce in Field Service Business? The Easy Way

Managing a blended workforce requires some tactical approaches and tools so you can balance your in-house or independent field employees or contractors effectively. Here are your tips to manage your diverse workforce.

1 – Understand What Kind of Workforce Mix You Need

As discussed previously, a blended workforce involves diverse hires. It can include permanent or full-time staff with fixed job roles.  It may also consist of independent contractors, such as gig workers or freelancers, hired for specific time-bound projects or tasks.

It can even incorporate field service staff or workers responsible for performing on-field tasks, such as troubleshooting hardware or appliances. Additionally, it includes selling new medicine batches as MRs, etc.

The key is to start with what all kinds of staff or workforce will be a part of your hiring and onboarding process.

2 – Define Proper Roles & Hierarchies

Once you have boarded the right hire, establish roles and hierarchies between reporting and reporters. Formulate a structure that tells who has to report to whom.

Doing so will help you achieve three things…

• First, it will bring clarity to roles
• Second, it will have clear communication lines
• Third, it will help with role clarity, and help have better accountability.

Most importantly, improves collaboration between the field and in-office teams.

3 – You Need a Unified Platform to Manage Your Workforce

Once you are sure of what all kinds of staff will be a part of your process, that’s a great head start. The next and most important step is to invest in powerful and centralised workforce management systems like TrackoField. Trust us, this is a wise investment.

This single, centralised platform will make a lot of things easy for you to do:

• It will let you painlessly create job and shift schedules (yes, even if you have variety and hundreds of staff).
• It will enable you to distribute tasks via a digital checklist and calendars to any remote worker or team.
• It will help you manage attendance, leave requests, and payroll data for accurate compensation.
• Plus, in case you are a business conducting an on-field sales process, the system has an exclusive sales order management module to handle every order-taking task.

4 – Go Invest in a Unified, All-encompassing Platform

Psst…don’t manage your workflow with multiple free tools. We have seen how businesses use different apps to assign tasks, manage attendance, and run payroll.

And what’s the result? They spend a lot of money and time juggling between those apps.

Managing different team types and sizes is challenging, especially when using multiple apps. The best-recommended way is to use a centralized field force management software like TrackoField. The bespoke software with a friendly interface and few clicks and buttons is ready to help you with:

• Flexible job scheduling.
• Remote task delegation and tracking.
• And overseeing admin tasks like geo-verified attendance, leave, and payroll.

5 – Conduct Regular Check-ins and Meetings

To effectively manage your composition of a blended workforce, we recommend scheduling regular check-ins and team meetings. So that everyone feels engaged and aligned.

In case you are managing an in-office team, using collaboration tools like Microsoft Teams, Slack, and Zoom will be a better aid in facilitating communication with on-site or even remote teams.

In case you are dealing with field teams or crew…

Invest in good field force management software like TrackoField that allows you to communicate with your crew via a sleek, in-app messaging feature supported by a voice note-sharing feature.

Some takeaways:

• Make sure all team members stay regularly connected with their teams and supervisors, fostering a sense of inclusion.
• Exchange regular task updates, create feedback opportunities, and establish clear goal-setting. This will help usher productivity and foster a sense of unity across your blended team.

6 – Conduct Thorough Training and Development

                “Hold onboarding programs if you usually don’t.”

Establish a process to explain company policies and expectations to on-boarded employees and contractors. Timely upgrade your diverse crew with some latest skills, tools, and methods to keep up with dynamic trends.

More specifically, if you have an HVAC contracting business, train your HVAC technicians or engineers on the latest tools and techniques. And even emergency situations that clients may pose on them during the site visit.

7 – Ensure More Strategic Performance Management

Establish clear expectations and performance indicators or KPIs for your teams. Alongside that, have a robust feedback system where teams within your established hierarchy receive constructive feedback and get recognised for their work.

For instance, if you choose TrackoField’s field workforce management system, you get access to comprehensive target vs. achievement reports. You can effortlessly review how many tasks were assigned and how many were actually completed.

Best part? The software compiles this data and reports automatedly.

All in all set clear performance indicators and expectations for both employees and contractors. Additionally, implement a feedback loop to provide constructive feedback and recognize achievements.

8 – Set Pace for a Welcoming Culture

“Inclusive culture is what keeps a human force engaged and motivated.” Quoted by many wise business owners.

Foster an inclusive company culture that values diversity and collaboration.

Infuse some team-building activities that include both employees and contractors to strengthen relationships.

Don’t forget Compliance and Legal Considerations!

Ensure all your blended workforce or contractors have clear contracts outlining terms, expectations, and payment details. Get yourself updated on labor laws and regulations to avoid any legal issues.

9 – Evaluating Success

Regularly analyze performance data to identify areas for improvement and optimize workforce management strategies. Get data on which sales staff helped close more projects, and service task tickets or which one brought more sales revenue to the business.

Along with it, don’t forget to gather customer feedback. This will help you assess the quality of service your allocated staff provided to the client/customer.

Parting Words…

A blended workforce means running a business high on relevant and dynamic skills. It’s like having the best of both worlds. To manage effectively, use smart field workforce management tools and be attentive to your diverse employee needs.

We bet you can’t handle the strategizing part and be proactive toward your employees’ needs. But for the right tool part, be sure to use a field force management software by TrackoField.

It will tackle all your processes of assigning tasks, tracking employees locations, progress & productivity.

More Similar Reads:

• What’s Facility Maintenance? For Which Properties It’s Extremely Important
• Field Sales, Outdoor sales & D2D sales – what’s the difference?
• Types of Employee Performance Reviews

FAQs on Managing Blended Workforce in Field Service

• What is meant by a diverse employee workspace?

  A blended workspace is where a variety of employees are hired, it can be in-house staff, remote staff, or field staff. Such a mix of diverse workforce e is required where businesses need more specialized skills and talent and for the most part, want to invest in cost-efficient hires.

• What are the benefits of blended workforce?

  A blended workforce lets businesses access more specialised skills, attain cost efficiency and achieve maximised scalability that leads to faster project completion.
  Moreover, with such a workforce, companies adapt quickly to changing demands, reduce overhead costs, and bring diverse perspectives to the table.