"As a Business Project Manager, working with C-innovate has been a breath of fresh air" - Terence Cox (Consulting).
Mandating device usage
If you are going to mandate mobile device usage, don’t rush into it. It may seem like the solution to your problems, but more likely than not it is a smokescreen to veil endemic issues.
Think about why you need to mandate. If the system you have delivered is so great, why aren’t officers bending over backwards to use it? There will be a range of reasons why, but a very common one we come across, is that users are not confident and they have not had the appropriate support to make them confident. (Please note that mandating usage does not make someone confident).
Of course, mandatory usage may be a work process necessity, or may deliver significant savings so is an organisational necessity. That’s fine, but go about mandating in a supportive manner. Identify the processes that you are going to mandate, consult with your users to confirm that these processes are appropriate to mandate, and then tell the users that these processes will become mandatory in a specific timeframe (e.g. 3 months) and put the appropriate support mechanisms in place to ensure all users are up to speed in time. Don’t, for example, send out an operational order that all PCSOs will do their PNC checks on a handheld device as of next week. It won’t work, or at least it won’t achieve the desired goal – under confident users will avoid doing PNC checks, all users will be frustrated because it is an inappropriate (and potentially dangerous) work practice to enforce, the number of devices being dropped will start to mysteriously increase.
Have you mandated usage? We’d be interested to hear your thoughts on the matter.
