Are your sales reps or field engineers being completely honest with you? When managers’ control loses its grip outside the office, then human factor takes its toll. Including fuel frauds, documents altering and using company vehicles to moonlight. We know exactly what employees hide from their bosses. How did we find out? Simply by asking them.
Joe, 33 y.o., automatics service engineer. “Gas compensations – that’s what I’m not fine with in this company. They are way lower than the recommended IRS rates. I’m using my personal car for work and this reimbursement is absolutely not fair. More often than not I have to enhance the number of miles driven to break even.”
But we understand the managers just as much. There is no proof that the employees aren’t adding something “extra”, including cruising around on the weekends and running personal errands. In the end it looks like there is no right or wrong, and without reliable data every side has definitely a bone to pick with the other.
Pablo, 29 y.o., driver. “I drive a company van. It’s a 6 am to 4 pm job on a 3:3 ratio. I get to park the van at home, so I use it for some side jobs on my days-off, let alone that the expenses are covered by the milage. Whatever you say – you just need the receipts for confirmation. I know it’s bad, but I have to make ends meet. You gotta do what you gotta do.”
Internal fraud is something that companies should keep in mind all the time. For some employees a fraud is something more than just a your-boss-won’t-find-out kind of thing, it’s fully rationalized. They believe they are entitled to the property for being overworked – when they are forced to stay behind for an hour(ish) to sort things out or to give the boss or his family an occasional ride.
Damien, 22 y.o., sales representative.“At work I’m asked to do the impossible, that is to visit around 15 to 20 customers a day. I tried to reason that it’s not feasible, but since no one listens to me I have to resort to some tricks. Sometimes I agree on purchasing deals over the phone instead of an actual visit. Now that will depend on the type of personal relationship you have with the client. If you’ve been working for a long time — they will probably cover for you “as a favor” in case the manager calls to check.”
Gigantic workload can hardly help to boost efficiency and excessive paperwork won’t help you find the lazy ones either. If you wish to evaluate your team’s performance fair and square you need transparent and clear metrics applicable to everyone.
Cutting-edge GPS tracking systems for field service monitoring, like X-GPS app, are now available as mobile apps. Having this business software in your company will allow you to store all the trip data in one digital place and to have access to its analysis anytime, anywhere. Let the system serve as a mediator to bring the employer and the employees closer in achievement of their goals:
- Assign schedules for customer visits by the optimized routing and have it in handy anytime;
- Enable supervisors to monitor teams online during the day to promptly respond to any emergencies and to inform the clients in a timely manner;
- Benefit from automatic trip tickets and metrics for fuel reimbursement;
- Have any reports generated on a click to track performance.
For business owners it means cost effectiveness and performance boost as early as within the first weeks into with minimal investment.
Transparent data exchange from setting of objectives to automatic generation of reports lays the groundwork for a fair play. It creates a culture of health competition, enhances mutual trust and helps avoid any office drama. Altogether, it helps the team concentrate on what is really important for business and development.
