Like many other industries, construction and the skilled trades took a beating during the pandemic. But now with the economy rebounding, jobs being added instead of lost, and new projects being started, there are plenty of signs that they’re coming back strong. To support this recovery, workers can’t keep muddling through messages on multiple platforms because this leads to costly rework, excess motion, and the other wastes of lean construction that we explored in depth during our recent blog series. That’s why here at Hivot, we set out to forge a better way for onsite and offsite employees to stay up to date so that they get the right information to do the right tasks at the right time. In this first of four parts, we’ll take aim at how Hivot gets new users rolling quickly with single-pane communication.

Traditionally, one of the main challenges with existing communication tools in construction and the industrial trades is a steep learning curve and a challenging sign-up and onboarding process. If a busy worker finds it difficult – or, in some cases, virtually impossible – to install, log into, and start utilizing an app, they simply will not use it and it will become shelfware, no matter what their boss tells them. Perhaps this is why the typical staff member uses between three and six messaging apps per day and nine in total – because they’re hard to use and none does the job quite right. Not to mention the fact that most systems don’t integrate with each other at even a basic level, creating a “the left-hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing” scenario all too often and leads to hours of extra busy work every week.

This is one of the reasons that we looked at Hivot through the eyes of the people it will serve – workers and their supervisors. We reasoned that our unique approach to jobsite and field communication would only be successful if even the busiest and/or least tech-savvy users could master it in mere minutes. That’s what led us to a seamless and rapid onboarding approach that allowed new users to sign on without even needing a password.

Simplicity Meets State-of-the-Art Security

This isn’t to imply that Hivot is unsecure or puts sensitive private information at risk. In fact, we use and often exceed industry-standard protocols to ensure that individuals’ and companies’ privacy is protected at all times. We architected unique identifiers for users as they input additional credentials to their profile so that they can identify themselves in multiple ways to access the platform securely. Because when things get hectic onsite, the last thing a worker wants is to be fiddling with complicated log-in procedures. They need ready access so that they can retrieve the exact information their team needs to get the job done right the first time.

Taking this approach one step further, we also made it simple to build out teams in Hivot by enabling users to add peers/colleagues directly to projects and sub-projects. Multiple platforms enable this at a basic level, but a one-of-a-kind thing about Hivot’s feature set is that it empowers users to do so directly from message threads. This saves yet more time by eliminating the need to go back into a project management pane to create, assign, and track tasks. Rather, authorized users can do this directly from their messages, allowing them to involve relevant colleagues in must-do tasks and then freeing them up to get back to what they do best.

With Hivot, entire teams and subteams can get started with real-time, consolidated, single-pane communication right away. Now those fragmented communication apps we’ve been struggling with for years can become obsolete. Replaced by a single-pane communication model that allows workers to retrieve current and complete comms at the precise moment it’s needed, and to take the relevant action to keep projects moving smoothly.

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