Remote Workforce Challenges
Service Delivery
Ensuring that staff turn up on site, on time, is the single biggest challenge for employers of remote
staff. Potential service breakdown needs to be identified and prevented before the call from
the disgruntled client, otherwise trust can quickly be lost. This presents a difficult challenge, as
communicating with remote staff and verifying timely on-site attendance is inherently problematic.
Controlling Costs
In today’s tough economic climate the pressures to control costs and provide greater value for
money are greater than ever before, presenting a major challenge for all employers of large workforces.
Those organisations open to finding new ways of controlling their costs without lowering
standards of service will have a significant advantage when it comes to competitive tendering.
Managing Remote Staff
The high costs and variable signal quality of mobile phone services means that communication
with remote staff is often difficult, so hindering effective management and efficient staff utilisation.
The difficulty in verifying the actual duration of a remote site visit compounds the management
challenge, leaving employers vulnerable to payroll overpayments and potential fraud.
Workforce Safety
Remote workers typically work away from their employers premises, unsupervised and alone. In
addition, remote workers often work outside standard office hours. This presents a unique set of
challenges in terms of staff safety. Employers have a duty of care towards their lone working staff
and need to demonstrate that they have taken effective steps to manage the risks.
Payroll Processing
Remote workers traditionally use timesheets and processing these timesheets can be a time
consuming inefficient task. Typically remote staff make multiple visits to different sites in any one
week; more often than not there will be different rates and terms for different sites, making consolidations
particularly awkward. Payroll is usually weekly, so processing speed is crucial.
