The Workforce Challenge
Empower Support Services employs 60 support workers ranging in age from 19 to 67, with widely varying levels of digital literacy. When operations manager Theo K. was tasked with rolling out a new mobile-based workforce management system, he was sceptical about achieving full adoption.
“We have workers who are brilliant at their jobs but have never used a work app before,” Theo says. “I was worried we’d end up with half the team using the app and half still using paper, which defeats the whole purpose.”
Choosing the Right Platform
Empower evaluated three platforms before selecting Maxpilot. The deciding factor was the mobile app’s simplicity. “It looks like a consumer app. Big buttons, clear instructions, no jargon. When we showed it to some of our older workers during the evaluation, they got it immediately. That was the moment I knew.”
The Rollout
Empower ran a two-week rollout with the following structure: week one saw all workers receive individual 15-minute onboarding sessions (in person or by video call) covering the three core tasks — viewing shifts, clocking in and out, and writing shift notes. Week two was live operation with a dedicated support channel for questions.
By the end of week one, 52 of our 60 workers had clocked in via the app at least once. By the end of week two, we had no paper timesheets at all. I still can’t quite believe how smooth it was.
The Impact on Payroll and Compliance
With all shift data flowing digitally, payroll processing time dropped from two days to four hours. Timesheet disputes — previously a monthly headache — have effectively disappeared, because clock-in and clock-out times are GPS-verified and timestamped automatically.
Shift notes are now written on-site immediately after each visit. The quality and timeliness of documentation has improved markedly, with the organisation’s overdue notes rate falling from 23% to under 2%.