Remote Construction Teams: Tips to Help You Conquer Common Challenges

During the past few months, we have been facing many challenges with the Covid-19 outbreak that has put a halt on everyone’s lives. Restrictions on social contact has made it much more challenging in the construction industry with site closures and sick workers.

Our new normal is working at our home office, distanced, but together.

The challenge now becomes adjusting to a remote work-life balance, which is putting pressure on companies to quickly adapt and invest in communication tools, real-time project management solutions and e-learning.

To help you reduce your stressors, increase productivity and adapt to a more remote work environment, here are a few key suggestions that may help you with your remote construction team.

Track Your Employees Hours In The Cloud

Construction companies use a simple system to track employees’ hours like punch cards, time-sheets, buddy punching, etc. This system can be inflexible during times like these. Adopting a digital time tracking software that stores data in the cloud, as appose to manual time tracking can potentially free up a project manager’s time for other tasks.

There are various options out there and the features that you should look for include: cloud-based, real-time tracking, project tracking, detailed reporting on time logs, and integrations. These can lead to easier management and data transfer from one application to another.

A tool called “My Hours” is a free time management portal that allow users to track hours, share reports, organize unlimited project tasks, and more.

Find A Universal Communication Platform

Effective communication is always tricky, but meaning and nuance can get lost when your communications rely on too much on text or chat.

Establishing valuable communication with your employees either in the field or remote is important – especially if you have employees working in the field, who are employing social distancing and the other guidelines to stay safe.

To handle any communication issues with your team, employing a communication platform that is easily available to everyone on the project team is key.

Some project management tools that could help include scheduling software that be used to manage shift assignment and changes. Communication and conference tools like Zoom or Skype allow the team to come together as a whole, in real-time to solve any issues and to bring everyone up to speed.

Making Safety A Priority

An important piece of this all is to prioritize your team’s safety.

Adjust your construction sites and offices to accommodate the “new” normal by following safety guidelines that are set in place to help eliminate Covid-19.

Keep in touch with your team members who are onsite and listen to their needs. Try to work together to make it a safe environment since they are the ones working onsite and have to deal with the risks.

We are all in this together and when we each do are part and look after one another, this virus will have no choice but to subside.

Daily Or Weekly Check-ins With Your Team

As a project or team manager, having scheduled check-in times with your team can help with productivity as well as keeping everyone on the same page.

Frequent communication will allow you to check the team progress as a whole or individually which in turn will highlight their hard work.

Acknowledging and appreciating your teams’ work during this time will help everyone work smoothly and will heighten the productivity and motivation to continue doing a great job.

Recognize your teams’ hard work by posting about it in the blog, newsletter, or mentioning it during a check-in to let them know their hard work is not going unnoticed.

Invest In Online Training

It is never to late to invest in your team and implementing training so they can be ready to tackle any new projects, and this would be a great time to do so.

Employing a construction planning and scheduling online learning course can help, as well as introducing mobile reporting tools that can be used remotely to keep processes aligned with members onsite and remote.

The investment made in your team and company to implement a more digital approach will be beneficial during and after the circumstances have changed. However, these changes seem like they may be here to stay for a while and being adaptable to change in the construction industry is a major plus to help boost productivity and work progress.

So, keep your distance, wash your hands and follow the protocols to keep yourself healthy as well as others safe.

Do you have any challenges that you are facing during this difficult time and have mastered your way around it by now? Leave a comment below with your challenge and solution that other fellow professionals can try executing.

Sources
My Hours|How Project Managers Can Handle Remote Construction Teams
Lets Build|5 steps to overcome remote work challenges in construction