Page 149 - Managing the Mobile Workforce

128 � mAnAgIng the moBIle workForCe

` less Autonomy, hIgher employee sAtIsFACtIon

We thought the impact of “being told what to do” might have a di-
sastrous impact on employee satisfaction, but it doesn’t have to. Rick
Mayer, owner of Island Aggregates, a concrete pumping company
in Vancouver, Canada, assured us otherwise. He now uses mobile
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performance management technology that has improved productiv-
ity, with potential cost savings of $100,000 per year. It has improved
the accuracy of billing and invoicing, reduced data entry time, facili-
tated faster billing and dispatching, and overall has improved resource
management.
But what about the employees? On the surface it would seem as if
employees in these systems work like galley slaves, tightly leashed to
their work with little opportunity for creativity or decision making.
But let’s dig a little deeper.
“That’s not true at all,” Rick told us, though making the change
to this system wasn’t easy. “We had long-term employees who ran
this equipment in a certain way, and change was difficult. We were
developing it as we implemented it, so there were some glitches. There
were some frustrating moments. I won’t lie to you.” But over time em-
ployees have grown to value the new system. “Right now, if the unit
goes down, the guys don’t want to come to work,” Rick says. “It has
made their life very easy. We’ve actually been able to attract employees
now from our competition because they were having to drive all the
way back to the office to hand their paperwork in or they were terrible
writers.”
So, why is it that employees prefer more control over their work? It
seems counterintuitive.
It turns out that mobile performance technology reduces the work
employees don’t want to do and don’t like doing, such as paperwork, so
they can do more of what they really like doing. Rick tells this story:

This one fellow who came to work with me in the last two years, his wife
had to rewrite all his bills. His handwriting was so illegible. He would