NRG Saves Increases Efficiency by 60% with GoCanvas

How NRG Saved Over $20,000 by Switching to GoCanvas

The Background

NRG has grown from an energy generator to a global leader in the energy provider space. As NRG grew they needed a system that was capable of continually improving with their business. NRG had been using a company called GoFormz to help automate their data collection processes, but the GoFormz platform was difficult and hurting productivity.

The Problem

NRG’s field techs began resorting back to a pen and paper so they wouldn’t have to use the GoFormz platform. It wasn’t only difficult for the field techs though, office personnel reported that managing the platform took hours and a simple update could take weeks to implement. Jeff Sampeer from NRG realized that his teams needed a better way to collect and share data. 

The Solution

Jeff spoke with a representative at GoCanvas and decided that it was the perfect platform for automating their business processes.

Some of the first processes that NRG converted into mobile apps were their Lock Out Tag Outs (LOTO) form, Safety Audit, and inspections. Jeff was shocked to learn in just his first few app conversions how simple it was to create and customize. With these mobile forms, Jeff was able to deploy GoCanvas to his field technicians within days and begin seeing the impact. Reports were now able to be shared, reviewed, and retrieved in real-time.

Since then, they have created and deployed a variety of different mobile forms including:

  • Vehicle Safety Inspection
  • Pre-Job Evaluation
  • Confined Space Permit
  • Audits

Jeff has continued to work closely with our team at GoCanvas to optimize the way NRG staff use GoCanvas by implementing required fields and reference data to eliminate manual data duplication.

“ What would have taken us a week and a half with GoFormz, takes all but a few hours with GoCanvas.” – Jeff Sampeer

Additionally, Jeff and his team have taken the steps to begin standardizing submission processes across their business. With each tech submitting their information over the GoCanvas platform data is consistent and important information isn’t lost.

The Outcomes

Since deploying GoCanvas, NRG has successfully developed and deployed multiple mobile form processes across the business. With GoCanvas, NRG is able to easily customize and dispatch any form within minutes. Features such as the ability to work offline allow for field techs in remote areas to make submissions.

Today NRG has further solidified their place as an industry leader by increasing their efficiency and improving the way they share information. In just a few months since deploying GoCanvas, NRG has saved countless dollars in productivity and have increased their efficiency by over 60%!

Ready to Rethink How You Work?

GoCanvas has helped a variety of businesses across multiple industries transform their safety processes and rethink their efficiency, ultimately saving them money. Why not do the same? Reach out to one of our experts today to kickstart your process revolution.

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Ultimate Checklist for Effective Toolbox Talks

Ultimate Checklist for Effective Toolbox Talks

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Just five to 10 minutes a day can make a significant difference in your construction or manufacturing company’s safety record. Holding regular toolbox talks — short, informal discussions that focus on one specific safety issue — can result in proven safety and cost benefits, including lower insurance rates, reduced turnover, and less damaged equipment. However, to make these talks successful, you must prepare, deliver, and document them the right way. Make sure you’re equipped to host effective safety briefings by following this checklist.

About GoCanvas

GoCanvas® is on a mission to simplify inspections and maximize compliance. Our intuitive platform takes care of the administrative tasks, freeing our customers to focus on what truly matters – safeguarding their people, protecting their equipment, and delivering exceptional quality to their customers. 

Since 2008, thousands of companies have chosen GoCanvas as their go-to partner for seamless field operations.

Check out even more resources

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Gown Your Business with GoCanvas Partner Program

Join our Partner Program and gain instant access to our global network of thought leaders and industry experts enjoying shared collaboration and collective success.

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Partner Snapshot: Forte Supply Chain Solutions

Explore how Forte Supply Chain Solutions partnered with GoCanvas, combining in-house industry expertise with our white-label mobile forms to revolutionize their processes.

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GoCanvas Integrations: Streamline your Workflow

Integrate with over 1,000 software applications. Enhance your GoCanvas experience by syncing real-time data to one or all of your business tools.

Connect with an Expert Today.

We’ll help you put together the right solution for your needs.

3 Benefits to Connecting Work Orders with your Accounting Systems

3 Benefits to Connecting Work Orders with your Accounting Systems

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No one loves doing work orders, but they’ve become an essential part of the data collection process for many companies across the world (especially in the Construction industry).

While more and more companies every day are transitioning away from paper-based data collection methods, the fact still remains that the majority still complete work orders by hand. The issues with completing work orders by hand include:

  • Incomplete reports
  • Unreliable data
  • Inconsistent reporting times
  • Untrackable metrics

But the great thing about implementing a platform like GoCanvas is that it can be easily customized around the current business processes and systems that you already have in place. It also enables you to capture different types of data that you weren’t able to easily collect before with your paper-based work order process.

Features like Photo Capture, Barcode Scanning, GPS Location Verification and more allow you to leverage the power of your mobile device to collect the highest quality data, in real-time. But the best part is that all the data is automatically transferred to the GoCanvas secured cloud database where it can be easily organized and shared with your existing backend accounting and management software programs like Quickbooks.

About GoCanvas

GoCanvas® is on a mission to simplify inspections and maximize compliance. Our intuitive platform takes care of the administrative tasks, freeing our customers to focus on what truly matters – safeguarding their people, protecting their equipment, and delivering exceptional quality to their customers. 

Since 2008, thousands of companies have chosen GoCanvas as their go-to partner for seamless field operations.

Check out even more resources

business people discussing project

Gown Your Business with GoCanvas Partner Program

Join our Partner Program and gain instant access to our global network of thought leaders and industry experts enjoying shared collaboration and collective success.

Forte Supply Chain Solutions Partner Video

Partner Snapshot: Forte Supply Chain Solutions

Explore how Forte Supply Chain Solutions partnered with GoCanvas, combining in-house industry expertise with our white-label mobile forms to revolutionize their processes.

Closeup of a handshake.

GoCanvas Integrations: Streamline your Workflow

Integrate with over 1,000 software applications. Enhance your GoCanvas experience by syncing real-time data to one or all of your business tools.

Connect with an Expert Today.

We’ll help you put together the right solution for your needs.

Breaking Down OSHA’s Top 10 Most Cited Violations of 2017

Breaking Down OSHA’s Top 10 Most Cited Violations of 2017

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2017: OSHA Safety in Review

Where did all the time go? It seems like just yesterday we were posting the results of OSHA’s 2016 data findings, but here we are again.

The reason why it feels like déjà vu is likely because the top 5 most cited violations of 2017 are the same as those from 2016.  Fall Protection – General Requirments, Hazard Communication, Scaffolding, Respiratory Protection, and Lockout/Tagout all come in at the top of the list for the 2nd consecutive year. All combined, the top 5 most cited categories through September of 2017 have accounted for approximately 21,748 violations.

The bottom 5 categories consist of Ladders, Powered Industrial Trucks, Machine Guarding, Fall Protection – Training Requirements, and Electrical Wiring Methods. In total, these have accounted for 10,279 violations, which combined equals 32,027 total violations reported in 2017 thus far.

This amount of violations seems like a lot (which it is), but the good news is that it’s a dramatic decrease from 2016. Last year 36,531 violations were reported in total, which accounts for an overall decrease of 12%! This decrease can be attributed to many things, but overall it shows that companies are finally starting to become serious about the safety of their employees and investing in the right methods/technologies to protect them.

But all the news isn’t positive.

Within the OSHA top 10 violation list, there was one new addition from 2016 to 2017, Fall Protection – Training Requirements. This type of violation revolves around the lack of proper safety training programs in high risk and dangerous environments. This is a common issue in today’s building construction environment as the pressure to complete projects faster increases and proper safety procedures get put by the wayside. Patrick Kapust, deputy director of OSHA’s Directorate of Enforcement Programs, puts it into perspective by telling Safety+Health Magazine that “Many of these violations were specifically related to training requirements and ensuring that a training program for each employee who may be exposed to fall hazards is established. Often, these violations occurred in the roofing, framing and residential modeling industries.

While progress is being made, there is still much work left to do. If you’re looking to become smarter about the way you collect, report, and track safety information on your project sites, GoCanavs can help! Our Application Store has over 100 different OSHA specific mobile form templates available to download and use in seconds. Toolbox Talks, JSAs, Accident Reports, and much more can be customized to fit your exact business needs.

Click here to request a quick demo!

Top 10 OSHA Violations of 2017

OSHA Infographic

About GoCanvas

GoCanvas® is on a mission to simplify inspections and maximize compliance. Our intuitive platform takes care of the administrative tasks, freeing our customers to focus on what truly matters – safeguarding their people, protecting their equipment, and delivering exceptional quality to their customers. 

Since 2008, thousands of companies have chosen GoCanvas as their go-to partner for seamless field operations.

Check out even more resources

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Garden Grove Landscaping Improves Operational Efficiency by 50%

business people discussing project

How Garden Grove Landscaping Improved Operational Efficiency by 50% with Mobile Forms

Overview 

  • Industry: Landscaping Management & Construction
  • HQ Location: Waterdown, Ontario

Quick Facts

  • Recover $12,000 in paper costs annually
  • Return on investment of $75,800 in first 18 months
  • Mobile forms: Time Tracker, Work Order, Fuel Log & more!

The Problem

David Lammers, President of Garden Grove Landscaping, approached GoCanvas looking for a solution to their “data overflow” needs. Garden Grove was really beginning to scale as a business, acquiring new clients and more paperwork, but this explosive growth was also hurting them as well. They quickly realized that the massive amount of data they were collecting from their numerous job sites was now taking even longer to receive, organize, and analyze. In simple terms, their manual paper process was actually slowing down the business and causing them to become less efficient as they acquired more clients.

David knew that Garden Grove needed a better way to collect, share and learn from their data and that a platform like GoCanvas could provide the tools for his employees to have the real-time access to information that they so critically needed.

The Solution

The Senior Mobile App Consultants worked with David and the team at Garden Grove Landscaping to ensure they understood which processes were the most inefficient, and what key areas of the business were being most affected.

David and his team decided to take a more holistic approach. They took anything they did on paper and turned it into a mobile process within the GoCanvas platform. The goal was to have a single place where their employees could go to collect data, review reports, or share information in real time. This has ultimately led to the creation of over 10 different types of mobile forms across 5 different operational departments. It has also led to the implementation of the GoCanvas Dispatch and Workflow tools, which allows for the Garden Grove office staff to conveniently create, track, and assign tasks to their mobile field workers.

Check out the list below for examples of the types of mobile forms that Garden Grove has created and implemented for their team thus far:

  • Heavy Equipment Inspections
  • Fuel Logs
  • Vehicle Circle Checks
  • Incident Reports
  • Expense Reports
  • Quality Control Reports
  • Site Evaluation

The Outcomes

After just a year of creating, testing, and deploying the GoCanvas platform to their team, Garden Grove Landscaping has already seen amazing results.  “(Today) we’re able to complete worksheets in 30 minutes. Before it took us 3 hours. It’s saving us about $1,000 a month in time and paper costs”, said David Lammers, President of Garden Grove Landscaping.

David and his team have truly embraced the GoCanvas platform and the ability to build out their own processes without the need for IT support or coding knowledge. This has enabled them to build out a mobile form for every one of their processes and to grow their business without the fear of losing efficiency. In fact, David and his team are currently looking at even more ways they can integrate GoCanvas into their back-office operations including a direct integration with QuickBooks.

But the biggest benefit of implementing GoCanvas has been the confidence that it gives the Garden Grove employees. They no longer have to worry about losing a paper form or filling in the wrong information. All the data needed to complete their job is now in the palm of their hand, and that is what David truly loves about using GoCanvas.

“I start this business on my bicycle. I did invoices by hand. It is great to see the success of our company and the tools like GoCanvas can empower our employees.”

Ready to Rethink How You Work?

GoCanvas has helped a variety of businesses across multiple industries transform their safety processes and rethink their efficiency, ultimately saving them money. Why not do the same? Reach out to one of our experts today to kickstart your process revolution.

Check out even more resources

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Online Reviews and Your Business: By the Numbers

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If you’re in the hospitality industry, one dissatisfied customer may seem like a minor issue. But if that customer posts about his or her bad experience online, it can impact all your potential future customers — making it a major challenge. In this infographic, learn how online reviews can affect hotel and restaurant profits and what matters most to online reviewers. test.

About GoCanvas

GoCanvas® is on a mission to simplify inspections and maximize compliance. Our intuitive platform takes care of the administrative tasks, freeing our customers to focus on what truly matters – safeguarding their people, protecting their equipment, and delivering exceptional quality to their customers. 

Since 2008, thousands of companies have chosen GoCanvas as their go-to partner for seamless field operations.

Check out even more resources

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Centurian Transport saves $100k every year with GoCanvas

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TWO MEN AND A TRUCK® used GoCanvas to increase data visibility & compliance

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The New GoCanvas is Here!

GoCanvas

The New GoCanvas is Here!

The Law of Three

The popular saying is that good things comes in threes. The American Constitution promises: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. Even the planet we live on is the third from the Sun!

If last week is any measure, three events made it an awesome seven days for us.

First, we took a bold move to rebrand from Canvas to GoCanvas. While it may seem like a small change, it actually has a big impact. Most of our customers already know us best from our web site, which from beginning has been GoCanvas.com. So it makes good sense to harmonize the brand name and make us even easier to find.

Being empathetic to the challenges our subscribers face to run and grow their business, GoCanvas is also a great description of their journey with us. We help our customers Go somewhere that is new and different, with the confidence that Canvas is a destination where you can do something great for your company.

This week also saw the 9th major update of our platform. Improving the way our customers engage with GoCanvas is always a cause for celebration. But when we completely refresh our look and feel, it really stands out. GoCanvas 9 has now gone live, delivering a more fluid and intuitive customer experience on the web site. So, whether creating a digital version of a simple document or rewriting the way work is dispatched to field teams, it’s now even easier to collect important business information and automate your business processes.

Now to the third great thing that happened last week.

Hearing from our customers is how our inspiration begins. We firmly believe that shared knowledge is what sparks innovation. What was originally planned as a round table with 5 or so customers giving us feedback on new features, had to be rapidly rethought.. over 100 wanted to attend!

We decided to hold our first user conference: Transform.

It was exciting to hear people sharing how GoCanvas is the solution to their everyday operational headaches. Our thanks go out to Ed from Post Brands and Fran from Apex – each took the stage to give awesome presentations, showing the practical and impactful ways that GoCanvas helps them run and grow their business. It was real team effort at our HQ in Reston to bring everything together and heartening to receive the great feedback from the customers who attended. We look forward to holding Transform 2018 and will definitely need a bigger venue!

The brand name may have changed and the web site refreshed, but not our passion for innovating and creating impact for our customers. We are continually finding new ways not just to automate paperwork but go much farther, delivering moments that surprise, delight and help drive better results. We have some amazing things planned for 2018.

Welcome to the new GoCanvas!

About GoCanvas

GoCanvas® is on a mission to simplify inspections and maximize compliance. Our intuitive platform takes care of the administrative tasks, freeing our customers to focus on what truly matters – safeguarding their people, protecting their equipment, and delivering exceptional quality to their customers. 

Since 2008, thousands of companies have chosen GoCanvas as their go-to partner for seamless field operations.

Check out even more resources

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Gown Your Business with GoCanvas Partner Program

Join our Partner Program and gain instant access to our global network of thought leaders and industry experts enjoying shared collaboration and collective success.

Forte Supply Chain Solutions Partner Video

Partner Snapshot: Forte Supply Chain Solutions

Explore how Forte Supply Chain Solutions partnered with GoCanvas, combining in-house industry expertise with our white-label mobile forms to revolutionize their processes.

Closeup of a handshake.

GoCanvas Integrations: Streamline your Workflow

Integrate with over 1,000 software applications. Enhance your GoCanvas experience by syncing real-time data to one or all of your business tools.

Connect with an Expert Today.

We’ll help you put together the right solution for your needs.

Keeping Hotel Labor Costs in Check:  How Mobile Inspection Apps Can Help

Keeping Hotel Labor Costs in Check:  How Mobile Inspection Apps Can Help

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When guests visit a hotel, they expect a clean room, of course, but beyond that, they expect service. They assume a concierge will greet them at the front desk, a cleaning crew will tidy their room each day, and a whole host of staff members will be on call to meet their every need.

Service is an essential part of the hotel experience — so essential, in fact, that labor is one of the largest costs for hotels, accounting for 45 percent of total expenses.

And it will likely only get more expensive. As the unemployment rate in the U.S. drops, hotels must increasingly compete for talent by offering higher pay. And in some states, such as California and Washington, there’s been pressure to increase the minimum wage and pay hotel staff more.
To keep guests happy, hotels can’t skimp on service. They must continue to hire quality staff who can meet the needs of customers. But they also can’t succeed if profit margins get too thin. So as labor costs rise, hotels need to figure out how to increase staff efficiency to stay profitable and keep guests happy.

Here are a few ways hotels can improve employee efficiency:

To keep labor costs low, your cleaning staff must be efficient; the more rooms your employees can clean in less time, the higher your profit margins. At the same time, you can’t sacrifice quality for the sake of efficiency. If your cleaning staff rushes through the cleaning process and misses important tasks, your guests will probably notice — and those issues will likely end up in a negative online review that could hurt your business.

Mobile inspection apps can help speed up the cleaning process while keeping quality high. For example, staff members can document each room they clean with photos within the app rather than by writing lengthy explanations. And by using an app, the information for each room is immediately available to supervisors, eliminating the need to collect papers and return to the back office. Plus, staff members can quickly reference a checklist for the tasks they need to complete, so they don’t miss any critical steps in the cleaning process.

Maintenance costs can get out of hand if you have to keep addressing the same issues over and over again. Maybe the same toilet overflows every couple of days so you have to send an employee to fix it. Or maybe your staff has a habit of forgetting to empty the trash under the bathroom sinks, which means a team member has to routinely double back empty it, slowing down the cleaning process (and inviting guest complaints).

Having an efficient way to spot and track patterns is key to managing labor costs. If your staff is documenting tasks and inspections on paper (or not at all), it’s impossible to get a big picture of where recurring problems appear or which employees seem to be involved in high numbers of them. Mobile inspection apps allow you to identify areas of weakness, address challenges proactively, and be more efficient overall. You also get real-time access to your data, and the ability to easily create summaries that can show trends for future planning.

When you have new employees at your hotel, you probably require them to shadow a more senior staff member for a few weeks until they’re capable of performing their responsibilities without supervision. While that can make for effective training, it can also significantly slow down your cleaning teams until the new employees are up to speed. And when you consider the high turnover rate in the hospitality industry — 72.9 percent in 2016 — that less-than-efficient training time can add up.

Finding ways to train your new employees faster is key to keeping your labor costs down. For example, you can use mobile inspection apps to give your employees easy-to-follow checklists that are accessible on their own mobile devices. Employees are quick to train, more compliant, and have an easier time completing necessary forms using mobile inspection apps since they can choose from drop-down menus and common fields can be pre-populated.

Maximizing your team’s efficiency can help keep your labor costs low — but that’s only part of running a successful hotel. Get more tips for keeping your rooms full and guests satisfied in our interactive eBook, “Fresh and Clean: How Mobile Inspections Save Hospitality Industry Reputations.”

About GoCanvas

GoCanvas® is on a mission to simplify inspections and maximize compliance. Our intuitive platform takes care of the administrative tasks, freeing our customers to focus on what truly matters – safeguarding their people, protecting their equipment, and delivering exceptional quality to their customers. 

Since 2008, thousands of companies have chosen GoCanvas as their go-to partner for seamless field operations.

Check out even more resources

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Release Notes: iOS 11 and other updates to our mobile app software

Release Notes: iOS 11 and other updates to our mobile app software

This release is all about improving our mobile app software for Android, iOS and our Windows Desktop App. For iOS we are excited to release functionality that leverages Apple’s latest operating system. We hope this helps our mobile users have a better and more productive experience when filling out forms with GoCanvas.

Apple has released their latest version of iOS and here at GoCanvas our mobile developers have been exploring the new software and beta testing it for a few months now.  We have added a couple of features to leverage new functionality offered by Apple.

This feature is available when capturing photos with GoCanvas. Your photo gallery and a capture screen appear where your keyboard normally appears. The screen within the Canvas form you are filling out remains in place. We hope this saves mobile users a few seconds per photo by reducing the number of clicks it takes to capture photos with GoCanvas. If you pull photos from your gallery regularly, this will save you a lot of time.

The multi-tasking capability that Apple launched in a previous release was enhanced with iOS 11. We now allow you to multi-task with GoCanvas.  This allows you to run two apps side by side on your iPad Air 2 or iPad Pro. So you can have your Photos app open on one side of your screen and Canvas on the other. You can quickly find the images you need to include with your GoCanvas submissions. Or if there are other apps you use for your job you can run that one along with Canvas. Our hope is that our mobile users gain some productivity benefits here saving valuable time while on the job.

Thanks to iOS 11 we are now able to allow you to drag and drop photos into GoCanvas. Using the photo “keyboard” you can now drag photos from your gallery right into GoCanvas. Or if you are using our new multi-tasking feature you can drag photos from your Photos app right into Canvas. This only works on an iPad Air 2 or iPad Pro. Apple only supports it on those devices.

Customers have asked for this and we are happy to deliver it with this release. When you are previewing images you have captured with GoCanvas you are now able to pinch and zoom in on them. This will help you confirm if the picture you have taken captures what you were hoping to capture. Or if you are using Workflow and send a submission to another user that person can zoom in to get a better look at the image.

As with iOS, we have released this feature for Android, too!

 

When we released our completely re-built Windows Desktop App there were some features we didn’t make available initially.  This was one of them.  This feature allows you to restart a Canvas form after a user hits the “Submit” button. So if you are using Canvas in a retail or kiosk environment (waivers, entering customer information, etc.) where your customers are filling out a Canvas form you can just have the form restart after the previous user hits the “Submit” button. This way you don’t have to have your customers tap on the name of the form to fill it out.

Let us know what you think! We love feedback. You can send it to feedback@gocanvas.com.  Thank you!

About GoCanvas

GoCanvas® is on a mission to simplify inspections and maximize compliance. Our intuitive platform takes care of the administrative tasks, freeing our customers to focus on what truly matters – safeguarding their people, protecting their equipment, and delivering exceptional quality to their customers. 

Since 2008, thousands of companies have chosen GoCanvas as their go-to partner for seamless field operations.

Check out even more resources

business people discussing project

Gown Your Business with GoCanvas Partner Program

Join our Partner Program and gain instant access to our global network of thought leaders and industry experts enjoying shared collaboration and collective success.

Forte Supply Chain Solutions Partner Video

Partner Snapshot: Forte Supply Chain Solutions

Explore how Forte Supply Chain Solutions partnered with GoCanvas, combining in-house industry expertise with our white-label mobile forms to revolutionize their processes.

Closeup of a handshake.

GoCanvas Integrations: Streamline your Workflow

Integrate with over 1,000 software applications. Enhance your GoCanvas experience by syncing real-time data to one or all of your business tools.

Connect with an Expert Today.

We’ll help you put together the right solution for your needs.

4 Innovative Ways to Better Train and Engage Hospitality Staff

4 Innovative Ways to Better Train and Engage Hospitality Staff

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In the hospitality industry, things don’t stay the same for long. Restaurant menus change, hotel room rates fluctuate, and perhaps most noticeably — at least for an establishment’s owners and managers — employees come and go.

The industry is well known for a high turnover rate. In 2016, it reached 72.9 percent overall, although some restaurants (quick service and fast casual, in particular) experience a turnover rate closer to 150-400 percent.

That revolving door of employment spells real challenges for restaurants and hotels. The higher the turnover, the more people to train — and subpar training can put your establishment’s reputation on the line. If a new hire provides bad service, doesn’t cook food to standards, or fails to clean every surface in a hotel room, there’s a high probability it will end up in a negative online review. And even one bad review can harm your business.

To keep your establishment’s reputation sparkling clean, try these innovative methods for training your staff members and keeping them engaged.

The hospitality industry tends to attract young workers. The average hospitality employee is 34 years old — the youngest average age of any reported industry in a recent study. But depending on the establishment, staff can trend even younger. In quick service and fast casual restaurants, the median age is 21.

With such a young group of workers, it can benefit hotel and restaurant management to meet their employees where they’re at — which, typically, is behind the screen of a mobile device. The average millennial spends more than three hours on a mobile device every day (25 percent spend more than five hours and check their phone more than 100 times a day — on average, every 15 minutes over a 24-hour period). And that’s clearly not limited to time off the clock. Most U.S. workers (66 percent) admit to using their smartphones several times a day while at work.

Considering that heavy smartphone use, young employees may find it easier and more natural if they can perform parts of their jobs using their mobile devices. Employees can complete mobile checklists, for example, to make sure they’re following correct cleaning and safety procedures every time. Performing parts of their job on a device they’re already familiar with (and likely already have in their hands) can help them get up to speed faster — and keep them engaged.

On average, companies spend more than 50 hours and $800 training each employee. In a high-turnover industry, those costs add up quickly. The faster you can get an employee up to speed — and with fewer resources — the better.

Restaurants and hotels can speed up the training process by using mobile checklist, guideline, and inspection apps. Rather than having to remember extensive cleaning procedures or safety measures, new hires can simply access the checklist anytime, on their own mobile device. In the end, companies can speed up the onboarding process, which can help make sure customers don’t notice a lag in service or cleanliness.

Providing feedback to your staff is essential to improving their performance and keeping them engaged. Millennials in particular need and prefer feedback on a daily or weekly basis, rather than at an annual review. And they’re not only talking about positive reinforcement. In a recent survey, 92 percent of respondents agreed that negative feedback, when delivered appropriately, is effective at improving performance.

But in a busy industry like hospitality, it’s not easy to constantly monitor all your employees for feedback opportunities. By the time a guest or patron complains about poor service or a dirty room, the responsible employee may be gone for the day — and may not work another shift until the next week. Will you remember to provide that feedback the next time he or she clocks in?

If your staff uses mobile inspection, guideline, and checklist apps to document cleaning or safety procedures, it’s easier to keep tabs on who’s up to speed on your establishment’s procedures, who could use a refresher, and who is (or is not) following process daily. With mobile apps, all this information is available to you at your fingertips, eliminating the need to personally check on employees to ensure they are following proper procedures. You can even require employees to snap photos of their workstation or cleaning handiwork, which can help you spot issues and provide feedback immediately. That gives you the opportunity to objectively and quickly correct problems, which can help keep guest satisfaction and employee engagement high.

Of course, not all feedback should be negative — and employees benefit just as much from recognition for a job well done. Seventy-two percent of employees say they would work harder if they felt their efforts were better recognized. But the most effective way to provide that praise isn’t necessarily an employee of the month award, or a shout-out at the next all-company meeting. Most millennial employees — 80 percent — prefer on-the-spot (and frequent!) recognition.

But again — are you going to wait until a rave review for your establishment pops up on TripAdvisor to recognize your staff?

To provide timely praise to your employees, it’s important that you know that they’re doing a good job as they perform their daily responsibilities. When employees use mobile inspection apps, the data is immediately accessible in the cloud ­— which means you can see who’s doing a good job and acknowledge their hard work before their shift is over.

Training and engaging your employees can help you combat high turnover and associated training costs. But beyond that, it can help you provide the consistent, quality service that your customers expect — no matter how long your staff has been employed.

Want to learn more about how mobile inspection apps can help you keep your rooms and tables full? Check out our new interactive eBook, “Fresh and Clean: How Mobile Inspections Save Hospitality Industry Reputations.”

About GoCanvas

GoCanvas® is on a mission to simplify inspections and maximize compliance. Our intuitive platform takes care of the administrative tasks, freeing our customers to focus on what truly matters – safeguarding their people, protecting their equipment, and delivering exceptional quality to their customers. 

Since 2008, thousands of companies have chosen GoCanvas as their go-to partner for seamless field operations.

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