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As businesses around the world implement measures to safeguard their staff and customers, some communities are preparing to live socially distant day-to-day as a way to try to contain COVID-19 outbreak. And the nature of COVID-19 means that there is a global urgency to make changes quickly for businesses delivering crucial services so they continue to operate – so that families and communities have a chance of slowing down any infection rate.
The World Health Organization (WHO) is still working hard to understand all aspects of this latest strain of Coronavirus, but there are recommended strategies that employers can leverage to prevent the unintentional spread of the virus.
As communities are encouraged to do everything they can to reduce transmission of the virus, mobile workers, drivers and operators are a vulnerable group of the workforce who may get infected and pass the infection on unintentionally from site-to-site.
However, field job scheduling software is one way to introduce a layer of safety to your mobile workers as it can maximise social distancing and increase the safety of your team.
Here are three strategies to help you maintain social distance, whilst continuing to deliver services.
Notifications to assist with customer and mobile worker separation
Using software that includes the ability to send emails and text messages informing customers when work will be completed, what to do when the mobile worker arrives on-site and when a job is complete.
Businesses can leverage their job scheduling and dispatching software to automatically generate customer notifications. These allow customers to know when their job is scheduled and they can be advised of any recommendations for building in social distance so that they don’t necessarily come into contact with mobile workers, such as leaving deliveries in designated safe spots.
Using real-time alerts, for example when a delivery driver is nearby, is a quick and efficient way to ensure that customers have relevant information to minimise risk associated with COVID-19. And then similarly when a delivery is complete, an alert informs customers when it is OK to collect their delivery from their safe spot, for example.
Enhanced health and safety management
Many businesses by their nature have a higher degree of risk to their workforce – and many of these mobile workers and drivers are familiar with job specific health and safety checks before completing jobs. These can extend from pre-start checks for truck drivers to site inspections for crane operators and so on.
Expanding the set of compulsory safety fields to include additional measures such as sanitising equipment and hands between jobs and at the end of shifts could be a simple starter to a healthier workforce.
Access to key job details to reduce risk
When field technicians are able to access all the information they need about a job, they are able to reduce the level of interaction with others. Flow on benefits from this can include a higher ratio of jobs being completed the first time as well as the level of interaction required with customers being reduced. Both of these reduce risk to businesses – and maintain social distance.
There is no doubt that the world is entering a defining period of the 21st century and how communities and businesses respond to this is only just emerging. What is certain as the COVID-19 outbreak continues, is that businesses that leverage job dispatch and scheduling software to help keep their staff, customers and communities safe are more capable of continuing to operate, whilst avoiding any downtime due to staff being quarantined with COVID-19.
Using vWork, businesses can use the strategies outlined above to help manage their way through this period, as well as other features to deliver highly profitable field jobs. And as vWork can be implemented in as little as two hours, you can be underway quickly.
If you want to learn how businesses are using vWork to deliver vital prescription medicine to the housebound, groceries to families and energy to remote locations, get in touch to start a conversation today.
