Time Clock App Overcomes Labor Shortage Challenges

| February 11, 2020

Time Clock App Labor Shortage Challenges

 Time Clock App Overcomes Labor Shortage Challenges

3 Ways A Time Clock App Overcomes Labor Shortage Challenges

Shannon Corgan, Director of Marketing 

Are you using a time clock app? Labor shortages in the construction industry are a major issue and a top concern for construction business owners. You may be wondering how a time clock app can help you with this problem, especially since, according to the USG + US Chamber of Commerce Commercial Construction Index – 2019 Q4, 83% of general contractors are challenged to meet schedule requirements because of the skilled worker shortages. Changing your current time collection process to a time clock app with real-time entry and allocation may seem small, but I guarantee you will quickly see how it helps you work smarter, not harder when it comes to optimizing construction labor.

Here are 3 Ways a Time Clock App Helps You Overcome Your Labor Shortage Challenges.

1. Gather Accurate Labor Hours

You can’t manage what you don’t measure, and to overcome your labor shortages, it’s imperative to accurately measure your labor hours. You don’t want your employees to overestimate their hours by putting in a standard scheduled of 7 AM to 4 PM daily. When you use a time clock app to track labor in real time, you only pay your employees for the hours they work. A time clock app also eliminates buddy punching so you’re not paying employees when they’re not working. If you have a mobile time clock app, your labor cost accuracy will skyrocket, because employees simply clock in/out on their mobile iOS or Android device. No more paying employees for travel time to the job trailer or to the office to clock in or out. GPS will tell you where the employee is when they clock IN/OUT to reduce overpayment for labor hours. If you start using a time clock app with real-time data collection, it’s likely you’ll find your labor hours for a job are less than what you’ve paid in the past and you can actually complete the job in less time than before.

2. Track Completed Work in Real Time

Once you have accurate labor hours captured in real time with a time clock app, you need insight into what your labor force is doing in the field during their shift. Again, to overcome your labor shortage challenges, you have to measure not only total labor hours, but you also need to know how much work is completed during those work hours on each task to optimize your current staffing levels. When you’re measuring labor hours, tasks, and production in real time, you can make adjustments to keep your project on time and within budget. Find a time clock app that captures completed work as soon as your employees change from task to task with the flexibility to have supervisors enter the crew’s production or allow each employee to enter it. When the employees know they’re being measured in real time and that everyone in the company will have access to how much work they’re completing, you’ll see an uptick in productivity. With a time clock app, you’ll have global visibility across your entire organization and can see the most productive crews. To learn more about why you should be tracking your production in real time in your time clock app, view our video, 4 Reasons to Track Completed Work in Your Time Clock App

3. Identify Most Productive Employees, Crews, and Projects

Now that you’re using a time clock app to track labor hours, tasks/cost codes, and production in real time, there are several labor shortage issues that it can solve for you. Firstly, with a time clock app with real-time data collection, you now can see which crews are completing the most work and compare them to other crews doing the same work with similar labor hours. If one crew is consistently outperforming another crew, you can find out what the high performing crew is doing and share their best practices. You may find that you have enough employees and crews to do the work with your current staffing levels. We’ve had small customers save hundreds of thousands of dollars, up to $1.2 million, by switching to collecting labor in real time. It’s never been this easy to collect project field data in real time and take actionable insights to solve your labor shortage problems by tracking, labor, tasks, and production from a mobile time clock app.

Once you have accurate costs and production in real time, you can also bid more aggressively on future projects because you have accurate historical data from your real-time field data collection of similar projects. Once you have real-time insights into labor and completed work on your projects, you can easily identify best practices from your most productive crews and will likely be surprised by how much more productive those crews can be. In fact, you may be far less understaffed than you previously thought. Using real-time labor, tasks, and production data from a time clock app, you’ll optimize the labor you have and reduce your current labor shortages by working smarter, not harder.

To learn more about how WorkMax TIME can provide you with real-time actionable insights into how to optimize your staffing, click here or schedule a demo now