Looking for ideas! Organizing employee productivity and goals.

[Take Hart]

I have been trying to find an app or just an idea of how to organize and keep up with the everyday tasks/productivity/goals for each carpenter.
Here's the breakdown...

• We are a finish carpentry business of 12 employees.
• All jobs are remote
• We work about 3 or 4 jobs at a time with a team of guys at each job.
• We use TSHEETS to track times and locations
• As of now, we have each employee type a message on TSHEETS explaining what he got done that day. My assistant calls them every day at the end of the day to get their goal for the next day. They must include in their notes if they got their goal completed or not. My assistant then transfers all the data into a job journal we have for each individual job.

The issue we run into is lack of structure and organization. The way we do it now seems redundant and too many steps. Also, for many of my employees, English is their second language. Details are whats needed in the notes in order to reference later for future jobs (bids and execution). When just giving them free range to type what they please, small details are lost or not included. It would be nice to have something for them to fill out and add some notes if necessary (a guideline). I'm just not sure how to go about this.

The main goal is to stop the redundancy and make it very user-friendly for my staff. Any ideas big or small are welcome. Thanks for reading!

 

[djbaxter]

Hi, @Take Hart.

Just to be clear, are you looking for alternate project tracking software? Maybe something easier to use?

Or is it more that you are looking for a different process to track where you are in the various projects?

 

[Take Hart]

Hi, @Take Hart.

Just to be clear, are you looking for alternate project tracking software? Maybe something easier to use?

Or is it more that you are looking for a different process to track where you are in the various projects?

Hello! Yes and no. If anyone knows of a tracking software that does everything TSHEETS does plus more detail then we would be willing to change. Or we don't mind using another app in addition to our TSHEETS.

 

[djbaxter]

I haven't had time yet to really check it out but I have just started playing with Trello

Might be worth looking at.

You can use it both as a browser application and as a mobile app.

More information in my post at Trello task organizing & collaboration app

 

[Edvin]

Hi @Take Hart,

I don't know if this will work for you, but, I'm in the opinion that many businesses can be more productive with a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution. All customer interactions as well as services rendered are tracked. One large player in this area is SalesForce, and you would need to find the right plugin (i.e. timesheet) for your needs. There maybe more cost effective CRMs (like SugarCRM); but, you'ld have to evaluate each separately.

 

[djbaxter]

My assistant calls them every day at the end of the day to get their goal for the next day. They must include in their notes if they got their goal completed or not. My assistant then transfers all the data into a job journal we have for each individual job.

This strikes me as the place for the biggest savings in time and money. You need a system where the projects are assigned and individual team members update/report their progress in one place. Having to transfer information to another worksheet or recording system is wasteful. I'm also not sure why you need to set and record goals for the next day: Surely that should be obvious - make progress on that project, the faster the better.

 

[TribeDoor]

I'd probably just use a online survey app, if you are looking for details on job completion at stages.

 

[djbaxter]

I'd probably just use a online survey app, if you are looking for details on job completion at stages.

That wouldn't help in obtaining an overview of where the team/company as a whole is on various projects underway. Project tracking software allows you to see what is in progress for any active project, what remains to be done on each of those in progress, and projects still waiting to be started.

You want all that information in one place.

 

[StartupDevon]

You might check out Zoho Forms or Zoho Creator. You could build a custom form with whatever fields you want and use it to ingest data from your carpenters. Add as much structure to the process as you want. (I would share a link, but I haven't met the requirements to share links yet. Should be easy to find.)

 

[Charu]

Hi Take Hart,
i don't know will it work for you or not. but i think this will you an idea. In our business, we have set up some KPIs and with the help of IT tools its easy to getting things done on time.