Construction risks losing staff to digitised sectors

A recent survey conducted by WorkMobile suggest that paper-reliant trade and utilities businesses may be at risk of losing staff to tech-savvy competitors.

With over two thirds of employees admitting that they would prefer to work for a trade or utilities business that was embracing digital technology over one that was stuck in the analogue past, construction firms need to look at their future-proofing.

The survey, conducted by mobile data capture service, found that 67% of workers in the trade and utilities sectors believe it would be more beneficial working for businesses that invest in digital technology to replace paper.

When asked why they’d rather work with digital technology instead of paper, a third (33%) think it would make documents easier to fill in and store, especially when working remotely, with 33% also feeling that it would make them more productive and effective.

Shockingly, the technology that most employees would like the company to invest in was email! Almost half (46%) of employees surveyed wanted their companies to invest in email, which suggests that some in the construction industry are lacking this most basic form of technology – despite it being available for well over a decade.

The survey also found that employees are favouring more innovative tech. Some 44% would like to see cloud computing introduced into their working practices to make document storage easier. While a third (32%) would like to use mobile devices, such as tablets and smartphones, to capture and store data remotely, with 20% supporting the use of mobile data capture, instead of paper-based forms.

Colin Yates, chief support officer at WorkMobile, said: “Investment in mobile technology brings a wealth of benefits for businesses, and also for their employees. Utilising cloud-based services, such as Dropbox, or mobile devices can make employees’ jobs much more efficient and increase their overall productivity levels. Menial tasks, such as filling in job specification forms, design blueprints or health and safety documents by hand, and then having to deliver or post them back to the office or store them correctly, will be eradicated, meaning that workers can just get on with their core jobs.

“The benefits are hard to dispute when so many companies have already reaped the rewards of switching. But, those remaining businesses that still rely heavily on paper really need to be getting on board with mobile technology to bring their processes up-to-date. Otherwise they could find that they’re losing some of their top talent to their more innovative, forward-thinking competitors.”

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