Tips for Effectively Managing Your Field-Based Teams

For businesses with teams who operate in a variety of locations, reaching deadlines and meeting expectations is tough. On one hand, it’s important to know the location and progress of each team member, on the other overbearing management takes a toll on morale. Striking the delicate balance between the two requires a little help. This is where field service management software and Arborgold comes in.

Throughout this blog, we’ll talk about the many ways that business owners and upper management can more effectively manage teams in the field. As a company specializing in field teams, we’ve come to know.

1. Set Clear Expectations

Before your team ever reaches the job site, they should know exactly what is expected of them from both you and the client. Team meetings, supporting documents, and strong communication set the tone for an upcoming job and set your team up for success.

Not physically being in the field with your team means delivering your client’s work order with extreme detail. Once you’ve gone over everything together, ask your team to repeat back the current instructions. This ensures everybody has heard and understands what is expected at the worksite.

2. Trust Your Team

Not being on-site with your field team means you can’t always be there to ensure everybody is doing what they need to be doing. Having a team that you can trust helps guarantee a successful outcome and allows you to rest easy knowing your brand’s reputation is in good hands.

Trusting your field team not only gives you peace of mind but also instills confidence in your staff and raises morale. A good leader is one who knows the strengths and weaknesses of their team and delegates accordingly.

3. Maintain Great Communication

No matter how amazing your field team is if there’s a lack of communication on a job site there’s a higher risk that something could go awry. For landscaping and gardening companies, missing the mark on a single project can make a big impact on an overall job. Staying in touch with your employees allows you to keep an eye on progress in real-time and ensure changes and updates to the existing work order are understood and carried out.

Great communication is the foundation of a strong field team. Staying in contact with your team provides lets you share information such directions, late or absent team members, changes to work orders, problems on-site, and more.

4. Use Arborgold Software

Providing your team with the tools they need to succeed is half the battle. When your staff has everything required to get a job done and do it well, your team, clients, and brand all benefit. At Arborgold, we strive to create software that is functional in a variety of work settings. We know no two businesses are exactly alike, which is why our software can be scaled to your business no matter its size or industry.

One of the tools we see many companies use is our mobile sales estimator. This is a perfect example of how having the right tools impacts a field team’s ability to operate. The estimator works with the Arborgold Cloud so information is shared with management and customers. Your team can access customer history, create drawings of the property, schedule and route appointments, and view and modify tasks as needed. All of this can be done from anywhere the software is accessible.

Arborgold was first established in 1994, and our software is constantly evolving to fit the modern tree, lawn, and landscape business. Whether you need help with email marketing and automation, project management, accounting and invoicing, or real-time job tracking for mobile teams, we can help.

5. Track Your Progress

Some things are easier to share across a distance than others. Fortunately, progress is one of them. Using a mobile crew up like the one we offer through Arborgold, your team can keep you apprised of weather conditions, when they clock in and out, and track progress on a current job.

Knowing how far your field team has come and what’s left to do allows you to create realistic goals and keep them. This ensures that the information you give your clients is up to date and reliable.

6. Hit Your Deadline

This seems like a no brainer, but meeting deadlines is an important part of a business, especially one relying on team members in the field. Deadlines are affected by a myriad of issues when you work outside, including weather. Finding solutions to these complications as they arise lets you meet them head-on.

The more deadlines you meet, the more confident you become in your team. Setting achievable short-term goals that lead to your overall long-term goal of a job well done by deadline encourages team building, organization, and accountability.

7. Reward a Job Well Done

When hard work is acknowledged positively, it encourages future hard work and success. Rewarding jobs well done and deadlines met increases the chance that your team will strive to meet and exceed those expectations again.

Having incentives in place for employees and teams which shine will keep field teams interested in building your company up. These incentives could be anything from longer break times and extra vacation days to a pay raise or pizza party.

Contact Arborgold to Learn More

Arborgold is always looking for new and exciting ways to serve our business partners and clients. Working closely with landscaping, gardening and pest control businesses for decades has given us insight into these industries and what makes them tick.

Our software is constantly being updated to meet the ever-changing digital landscape of the business world. Use our mobile app on your tablet or smartphone to keep tabs on your team, or explore proposal design and follow-up with our customizable account management software.  Interested in learning more about Arborgold and our field service management software? Take a tour and find out how Arborgold could positively impact your field team today.