Resisting the inevitable - how paperwork is holding the construction industry back

Digital transformation and new technology not only helps to keep a workforce connected, but it can attract the digitally-savvy generation to the job market too. This is increasingly important within construction, where employers need to keep specialist skills within their organisation.

Construction businesses need the right tools to make admin simpler, giving staff more time to focus on the job at hand. By providing online training and development tools, digital timesheets and job sheets, and automated processes, you can engage your employees at work, keeping them satisfied in their job, which is a crucial element to retaining your workers. 

Industry turnover rates are estimated to be 29.5%, costing organisations over £310,000 a year. So improving employee satisfaction is critical for saving time searching for skilled workers and saving money in recruitment and training costs.

Drowning in paperwork

Admin

Admin and paperwork can take up a lot of a construction worker’s time. According to HR News, supervisors admitted that their available working time had halved due to various meetings and admin tasks, which leaves very little time to manage the performance and safety of their teams. This can lead to disastrous problems, such as health and safety failings, compliance breaches, and unhappy customers if the job is not to a high standard, affecting an organisation’s reputation.

Job sheets

Paper job sheets cause employees hassle and stress as they can’t be edited and changed once they have been written, meaning field workers have to complete a new sheet every time anything changes on the job or if they enter anything incorrectly. This doubles their time spent on admin tasks rather than focusing on the job and causes 21% of workers to feel stressed at work, according to Build.

Timesheets

Previous research found that over 50% of organisations are still using paper timesheets, which can lead to spending an extra £1,500 a year per employee. Not only is this an expensive and time-consuming task, but it can also lead to employees making fraudulent timesheets, resulting in time theft.

Employees can fill out their timesheets for the week just in time for payroll, whether that is weekly or monthly. This can lead to them having to remember the start and finish times, days when they worked overtime, and days when they left early. When workers add in a few hours here and there, they start to add up over the year. Construction organisations that implement a digital timesheet platform spent 2% less on employees’ annual wages on average.

Training

Not only do supervisors get bombarded with paper admin daily from ongoing jobs, but training new starters and reskilling workers also requires a considerable amount of admin, sometimes resulting in workers not getting the correct training before starting a job.

How can digital platforms remove your paper nightmare?

Using an integrated workforce management system as part of your HR and payroll solution supports your supervisors with rostering, automated timesheets, absence management, training and development, as well as processing flexi-time and TOIL. This helps to reduce the admin burden, letting them focus on their team and the execution of the job.

Could there be a change around the corner?

We can see some change in the construction industry, with 61% of workers admitting to always carrying around a smartphone with them at work and 34% carrying around digital copies of work documents. So it makes sense for organisations to integrate mobile and desktop-friendly HR software that allows their workers to carry around all the appropriate documents with them from site to site. This also ensures they don’t waste time looking for misplaced or forgotten documents and can simply search and find the relevant documents they need.

Only 7% of construction workers say they would resist using new software, even if it were more suitable for their job. With such a small percentage, it shows that the industry has a willingness to change. What better time is there than now?

Digital transformation solutions to help you move forward

With workers carrying smartphones while on-site, they can access a wide range of websites, apps and tools at the click of a button. Why should HR and payroll be any different?

Our construction HR and payroll solutions not only reduce the burden of paper-based admin but also help improve accuracy, resilience and flexibility. Our workforce management systems are available as part of an integrated HR and payroll solution, allowing you to create and edit rosters and use digital clock-ins to compare planned working hours with actual time worked. This information can then be sent automatically to payroll, removing the need to enter the same data into multiple systems.

Our solutions help ensure payroll is accurate and delivered on time, regardless of an employee’s wage or location. By keeping everyone connected, they also make it easier to manage your workforce.

Keep employees engaged and productive with an integrated HR and payroll platform that brings social, collaboration and communication tools together with the core HR and payroll features you need. This means you can reduce your reliance on multiple platforms and minimise your administrative workload.

Our solutions are available via mobile, tablet or desktop 24/7, allowing workers to communicate with each other from anywhere, at any time. With an intuitive user interface, the platform is easy to use and requires minimal employee training, helping you implement it smoothly across your organisation.

Our learning management system uses auto-enrolment features, allowing you to define enrolment criteria so the system can automatically invite and enrol employees who meet them. It can also highlight single points of failure, where only one person holds critical knowledge about particular topics or processes.

Using our learning platform, you can train and develop your workers in an online environment without the burden of unnecessary admin. There are thousands of courses to choose from in one place, covering areas such as health and safety, compliance and management. This helps ensure you have appropriately trained employees on-site who can manage teams effectively and respond to changes or incidents that may occur while working.