Should I Buy Apple Watches for My Field Employees

To some of you read­ing this post, you might think this is a no brain­er. Yet, I have been asked the ques­tion, hence the blog post. Note: I am pret­ty cer­tain Apple will be releas­ing the 2^nd gen­er­a­tion of the Apple Watch soon­er than we think. So this post might get old real quick. On the oth­er hand, my opin­ion might stay the same even after the next Apple Watch release. I pur­chased an Apple Watch the day of the pre release, which is typ­i­cal for a tech junkie like me. I read lots and lots of arti­cles and sift­ed through count­less videos of blog­gers review­ing the watch and what it could be capa­ble of doing for the con­sumer. Once I got the Watch on my wrist and began the process of learn­ing this new gad­get, I came up with this con­clu­sion: At this point in time, I would not rec­om­mend that you pur­chase Apple Watch­es for your field employ­ees. These are very expen­sive gad­gets that will not, again at this time, increase productivity.  Now, obvi­ous­ly you can use the Apple Watch as a bonus for your crews, an anniver­sary gift or just because you want to be nice, but from a strict busi­ness per­spec­tive, the Apple Watch is not the right tool just yet for the con­tract­ing mar­ket.

What Should You Get Your Field Employees?

I am a huge fan of issu­ing smart­phones to your employ­ees. There are plen­ty of apps out there that can make your team more paper­less and pro­duc­tive. If you are not cur­rent­ly using an Android or Apple prod­uct in the field, I would strong­ly sug­gest look­ing into this for your crews. The devices can be used for a num­ber of things such as time clocks, reminders, check list, pho­tos and videos of the job and project man­age­ment. A more inex­pen­sive approach would be to issue just your project man­agers and crew leader (aka fore­man) Chrome­books. A Chrome­book is a very inex­pen­sive cloud-based com­put­er. It was cre­at­ed by Google a few years ago, and it allows users to use a brows­er for all of their com­put­ing needs. If your busi­ness is using all cloud now, a Chrome­book can real­ly be a great tool as well. Some­times it is eas­i­er com­mu­ni­cat­ing by a machine with a key­board, like the Chrome­book. It is also eas­i­er if your field guys are updat­ing or view­ing sched­ules.

Will The Apple Watch Come Around

I would nev­er put it past Apple to come out with a gad­get that more con­sumers will use on a dai­ly basis, like the Apple Watch. The first gen­er­a­tion is slick and very cool, do not get me wrong here. Yet it is too con­nect­ed to the iPhone right now. One can­not use this device effec­tive­ly with­out hav­ing a phone. So if you choose to give your employee(s) an Apple Watch, you will be required to give them a phone as well. It will not be long before the Apple Watch could very well be a stand­alone device, with no life sup­port from the iPhone. Once this hap­pens, it will also free up Apple Devel­op­ers to real­ly begin the cre­ativ­i­ty of devel­op­ing their apps for the watch. Cur­rent­ly there just is not a lot you can do with the Watch. I have tried hard to use the Watch. Prob­a­bly the best thing about the Watch, in my opin­ion only, is the noti­fi­ca­tions. Yet I am not sure that is worth the $400 – 600 fee for the watch for con­tract­ing employ­ees. Stay tuned. Once we can do job track­ing and use the Watch com­plete­ly hands free, instead of look­ing like Dick Tra­cy when reply­ing to a mes­sage, the Apple Watch could very well become a great com­mu­ni­cat­ing and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty device. As of today, it is just a cool gad­get us geeks like to wear.