Challenges in Onboarding and Training Field Workers

One of the greatest challenges faced by any organization is finding and hiring employees. Finding someone with the right fit of experience, attitude, and skills requires a careful search and in some fields, a lot of time. And then bringing them up to speed in your organization (“onboarding”), and training field workers for their new role is a second critical step.

When onboarding and training go poorly or someone comes in and isn’t fully prepared for the job it can be frustrating. To help with this process, let’s take a closer look at some of the most common challenges in onboarding and training field workers.

Essentially Remote Employees

Even if you are training field workers that will operate out of a central location with face-to-face supervision, they are essentially remote workers when they leave the office. Whether this is for an eight-hour work day, or for several days or weeks at a time, that time alone can be challenging for both the field worker and the organization.

What happens when a problem pops up for which they are not prepared? Does it impact the quality of the work being done? Does it cause unnecessary stress for the employee? These are situations you don’t want to have happen. To ensure this doesn’t happen, you should:

• Offer All Purpose Training — This applies to almost any organization, but especially those who may not be in the office very often. Make sure your field workers know exactly why they are doing what they are doing. All purpose training gives them a holistic view of the organization, what the people they will be communicating with are doing and why. By providing much needed context, you can help them perform better.
• Train in an Onboarding Step-by-Step Process — Don’t drop a 50-page manual in someone’s lap and expect them to “figure it out”. Incremental steps that reveal information as needed to a new worker will allow them to better internalize and learn your company’s processes.
• Welcome and Engage with Employees — Face to face interaction and welcoming of new employees is a must. This is especially true if interacting with field workers who you may only talk to on the phone.

There are several factors to consider here, but it goes beyond just general onboarding. How do you ensure your new employees are ready for everything you throw their way?

Reducing Confusion with Streamlined Processes

Regardless of the industry, a field worker is tasked with a lot. They must gather information following a number of detailed steps, interact with unique situations on a nearly daily basis, and do it all away from the team for which the data is intended.

The more streamlined you can make the process of collecting that data, the better your team will perform. It’s one of the reasons mobile data collection has become such an important part of the processes for so many different types of organizations. Whether entering survey data from live participants or observations from equipment in the field, this empowers your team to succeed and shortens the onboarding process, reducing the number of challenges faced.

To learn more about the benefits of mobile data collection for field workers in a variety of industries, visit our Solutions page. If you have questions or would like to discuss the value of mobile data collection for your business, contact Magpi today.

Originally published at Magpi.