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The Manager’s Journey: How Utrakk Optimizes Managers’ Daily Work

UTrakk Team
The Manager's Journey with UTrakk by Proaction International

To be effective, a technological tool must facilitate and optimize the good practices of its users on a daily basis.

To support, equip and help managers grow their skills, UTrakk is a Daily Management System that includes a set of features to guide them throughout their daily management activities and increase their performance tenfold.

Let's take a closer look at the daily journey of a frontline manager to see how UTrakk helps them adopt more proactive management behaviors at every step of the way.

 

Starting the day on the right foot

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Upon their arrival at work, the manager can consult the UTrakk Assistant module on their smartphone to view their management rituals for the day as well as a centralized list of actions for which they are responsible. This simplified agenda gives managers a clear vision of their roles and responsibilities and helps them prioritize their high-value activities accordingly.

They therefore start the day with the confidence of having all the tools in hand to drive their team’s performance and succeed together!

Getting on the same page to go above and beyond

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The first essential management ritual – the kickoff meeting – brings the team together to review yesterday’s performance and coordinate around today’s priorities.

With an agenda specific to each management ritual, UTrakk helps standardize the daily communication points with the team.

In the virtual meeting room, the manager can view all the topics discussed during the previous day’s kick-offs and site tours in the form of a discussion thread. This makes it easier to follow up on actions, among other things, from one day to the next, to highlight areas for improvement, recognize team members for their achievements and provide clear objectives for the period to come.

This way, the manager immediately enters a proactive management mode with their team.

Driving performance as a team

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With the first active supervision tour of the day, the manager visits each workstation under their responsibility and interacts with team members at the point of execution of the task at hand. This gives them the opportunity to validate the day’s plan with each team member as well as the priorities and issues that need addressing by the next tour.

iPad in hand, the manager knows what to audit at each workstation based on the UTrakk Field Tour checklists.

They can then enter all the qualitative and quantitative field data they need to monitor performance directly on the tablet, without having to carry around paperwork to later be transcribed. All information is centralized and processed in the application.

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By regularly conducting active supervision tours throughout the day, the manager proactively measures and evaluates the different performance axes within the organization (health & safety, quality, productivity, etc.). This way, any deviations that are observed – or reported by team members – are caught in real-time, and steps are taken to remedy them.

In the case of a health & safety issue, such as the presence of water in the warehouse, the manager documents the situation, with photos if necessary, directly in the application. He can then create an action and assign it to whoever will be responsible and a ritual to ensure follow-up.

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Getting the whole team on the same page

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Proximity managers meet daily with their colleagues and department management in a production review ritual to review the previous day’s performance gaps. They also review ongoing and expiring actions to ensure that all issues impacting operational performance are resolved.

The virtual meeting room used for management rituals allows this review of actions review in a prioritized agenda with all the management tools gathered in one place. Managers can thus create a real – paperlessefficiency hub.

 

THE 4.0 APP FOR MANAGERS  UTrakk DMeSDownload the brochure

 

Clear and accessible work instructions

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The most experienced employees are often knowledgeable about job-specific procedures and best practices, but these can be hard to keep up to date and enforce consistently.

By consulting the Knowledge Center, the manager can immediately answer his team members' questions concerning their tasks and help them put the optimized procedures and processes into practice. He can even guide them through the well-defined step-by-step work instructions, supported by pictures and videos that employees can also access by themselves on a tablet.

 

Switching to ‘Solution Mode’ and taking action

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When participating in management rituals focused on a specific theme, such as health and safety committees, the manager discusses issues raised in the field and assigned to that ritual with the appropriate stakeholders to determine the actions to be taken and follow up on those that are already underway. Actions are then assigned to responsible parties to ensure accountability and a deadline is set for resolution.

If the issue requires a more complex action plan, a project can be created in Utrakk’s Project Tracking module. The management of this problem can then switch to active solution and resolution mode.

 

Learning and sharing

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At any time or when they need help, the manager can consult the UTrakk community for tips and information about the app.

Through Q&As and thematic discussions, they have access to a network of professionals to take full advantage of the benefits of UTrakk on their team's performance management and learn from other users’ experiences.

DIGITALIZING THE MANAGEMENT OF St-Méthode BakeryDownload the Case Study

For planned and measured progress

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In a continuous improvement process, the manager meets with their coach to work together on developing management skills. The coach refers to the Manager's Passport in UTrakk for:

  • Planning coaching sessions
  • Making and following the management skills progression plan
  • Reviewing progress through Key Behavioral Indicators (KBI).

The manager and coach can thus work on active supervision, consideration factors, the ability to give clear objectives, etc. in order to continuously evolve according to a plan tailored to them.

 

Taking charge with confidence

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To ensure smooth management without silos, proximity managers meet at shifts changes to pass on all the useful information for the next shift.

With the UTrakk shift report, managers have a common definition of objectives (KPI) and can visualize performance at a glance to identify performance gaps that require intervention and the deployment of corrective actions.

All essential information is thus systematically transmitted through consistent communication between managers who ensure alignment and collaboration between the different shifts working towards common goals.

 

Taking a step back to challenge oneself 

End of shift analysis with UTrakk Dashboards : action plan monitoring, analysis of variances and their causes

Before leaving, the manager takes a moment to consult the dashboards and make a status of the conformities and non-conformities recorded during the shift in order to analyze the variances of the different performance axes (by workstation, by cause, etc.) in order to prioritize the actions needed to fix the situation.

This is the time to review the achievement of goals, complete information on the day’s events as needed, revise the action plans and map out priorities for the next day.

 

Leaving with peace of mind

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Once the day is over the manager returns home at peace, proud of the work they have accomplished with their team and confident in their abilities going forward.

 

A complete management tool that performs from morning to night, and beyond

With UTrakk to assist in mastering their daily role, the manager’s days are structured through the ritualization of their active supervision and management activities. Prioritizing and optimizing actions with high added value are a snap with the tool – management is more coherent and rigorous thanks to standardized communication points with their team.

By using the Field Tour module on their tablet or smartphone, they systematize the collection of quantitative and qualitative data during their active supervision tours and accelerate the escalation of performance gaps within the organization by creating, assigning, and monitoring concrete actions to address them.

The structure, flow, and follow-up of their management meetings are also optimized through virtual meeting rooms which, like the Field Tour module, provide a frame of reference allowing them to replace another manager as needed, with the flexibility to go to another department if necessary (and vice versa). As such, integrating new managers with the app is a simple matter!

And beyond this, the Manager’s Passport guides and informs their coach to help them develop their management skills according to a personalized game plan.

 

Boost your operations  With UTrakk LEARN MORE

 

More collaboration throughout the organization

With managers who are properly equipped to effectively drive performance in the field, the entire organization wins!

When operational issues are captured and effectively communicated to the appropriate stakeholders, different teams, departments, and hierarchical levels collaborate better on a daily basis by moving into solution mode. It is then possible to create a real cohesion to perform and evolve in a coherent and proactive way as an organization.

 


 

Book an appointment with one of our experts for a personalized demonstration of UTrakk. Proaction International's team of management digitalization experts can help you deepen your knowledge of Management 4.0 and get you in sync with the best management practices.

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UTrakk Team

UTrakk Team

UTrakk helps managers multiply the impact they create in their role to improve both their company's performance and their employees' work experience. UTrakk encapsulates Proaction International's 17 years of continuous improvement consulting experience into a digital tool to take the managerial orchestration of organizations to another level.