In 2016, the ABS found that people employed as carpenters, builders, and construction workers spent the second highest amount of hours per week at work — right after those in the mining industry spending more than 49 hours at work per week.

Chances are if you are in one of the industries mentioned above, the majority of your life is spent at work or on site — with too few precious moments left for family, friends, or doing the other things that make you happy. We all strive for that elusive work-life balance.

Too many of us are shackled with energy-draining chains which come from manual, paper-based systems.

How do you claim back that wasted time? I'll come to that — but first you need to understand just how the chain works...

Manual systems, menial tasks and mobility limitations are all links keeping your work life balance in shackles and chains.

Manual reporting systems create a tedious paper trail keeping you bound in shackles when you have to write, copy, distribute and securely store paperwork. They also create messy day-to-day headaches for project managers, evaporating hours of time which could be much better spent.

Think of how much time is consumed when you have to individually keep track of paper records for:

• Site inductions
• Compliance policies, procedures and legislation
• Work records and reports
• Staff tracking, equipment, assets and more

Paper processes contribute directly to the next link in the chain: mind-numbing menial tasks around the office.

Tasks like:

• Data entry – hours spent mindlessly entering numbers and jobs into spreadsheets.
• Scheduling on paper or whiteboards – not efficient for capturing and preserving important data
• Multiple phone calls – calling contractors, customers and co-workers for job records and reports.
• Vast quantities of emails – reading and writing to keep track of who is where and what is happening.

The final link in the chain is mobility limitations, or the lack of freedom you have as a result of the other two links.

Staying on top of paperwork requires so much manual juggling and human interaction, you get tied down with:

• More time on site
• More time in the office
• More time in the car

The manual systems chain creates a constant pressure that I suspect you recognise. And it isn't just bad for you. It is remarkably bad for your business.

Break the chain

In four simple words: Mobile Quality Management Software.

It’s a system which puts all of your recording and reporting systems — plus the critical information they produce — in the palm of your hand.

With it you can:

• Flick the paperwork – manage jobs from mobile, tablet or PC so you can work from wherever you want rather than where the paper trail dictates.

• Get complete mobility – allocate jobs from your phone without ever leaving home – use GPS to assign them to the workers closest to the site, minimising travel times and costs.

• Digitise Data – photo-capture site data for WHS or general reporting, so you can ditch unnecessary data entry, phone calls, emails and faxes.

What’s the first simple step?

Recognise the impact manual systems are having on your business and your life and acknowledge how good it would be to claim back wasted time.

Find out exactly what Mobile Quality Management Software could do for you.

Call Kontrol4 on 1800 058 996 or email contact@kontrol4.com.

Tell us about your business and we’ll show you how much difference a mobile management system could make.