In any given business, fieldwork has always been a vital part. Sending part of your team to collect some data is essential so as to ensure that you better understand what your audience expects from you. However, for the fieldwork to be successful, you have to do enough preparations for the same.
Fieldwork is not only time consuming but also requires you to chip in some cash for the same. What this means is that you cannot risk your money in the fieldwork and still not get it right. For this reason, in this piece, we will be giving you a few tips on how you can make your fieldwork successful;
1- Plan in advance
As the old maxim goes, failing to plan is planning to fail. As such, you want to ensure that you adequately plan for the fieldwork beforehand. You do not want to send a team to the field with no objectives for carrying out the exercise. Therefore, identify the area you want to focus on, what you want to know and your objectives and put them down on paper. You can do this together with your team as their input is very important in the process. Get to find out the best techniques they can use during the fieldwork, which ones they are well conversant with and how they prefer to get the job done. Having all this in place will ensure that you stay focused on the objectives and do not lose focus along the way.
2- Train the team
After laying the foundation of the fieldwork exercise, you now want to ensure that the team you will be sending to the field understand the whole project. You can organize a small training for them whereby you will layout the plan and explain in-depth how you expect the fieldwork to be done. At this point, encourage your team to ask as many questions as possible in order to be sure that all of them are on board. Remember, for the fieldwork to run effectively, the team on the ground must first understand the objectives.
3- Get the fieldwork materials
How do you plan to run the fieldwork? Most often than not, you will need some equipment for the team on the ground for the data collection. Fortunately, Given that we are now in a digital era, things have shifted to the digital space as well. Gone are the days where you could hand over a bunch of papers to your team for them to fill in the feedback and findings. Today, all these can be done using a mobile forms app. All that your team needs to carry while going for the fieldwork is a mobile device, and that’s just it.
What happens is that the input data on the device in real-time and you, on the other hand, can also be able to access the data in real-time. This, in turn, reduces the time that you would have otherwise used if you had gone the traditional paperwork way. Additionally, the mobile forms app is more efficient and makes communication much faster and easier.
4- Insist on timely delivery
It is crucial for your team to understand that time is of essence while conducting fieldwork. Some employees might see this as a time off to take a break and decide not to work within the set time schedules. However, as the team leader, you need to hold everyone accountable. Be sure that they are on the ground at the right time to ensure that they carry out the daily activities as expected. Insist on timely delivery to ensure that the work is completed in due time. Remember, at the end of the day, the objectives have to be met, and that will only be possible if your team works together with you.
5-Do proper analysis
After gathering all the data that you need, doing some data analysis then follows. Analyze the data accordingly using the right data analysis tools. Take your time in this process as it is what will prove if the work was done as expected or you will need to make a few adjustments.