Your name on the
staff app.

The app an operative installs should carry the name of the firm they work for, not the name of the company that wrote the software. It looks like a detail on a selection checklist. It decides what happens in the app store, at the gate, with agency labour on a Monday morning and in front of the client.

Three things that get called a branded app

Vendors use the word branded for different arrangements. The difference decides what your operatives actually download.

1. The vendor's app, with your logo shown after sign-in. The store listing, the icon on the phone and the name under it all belong to the vendor.
2. The vendor's app with your colours. The same arrangement, with your colour scheme on the screens once somebody has signed in.
3. An app published on the App Store and Google Play under your company's name and icon. The operative searches for your firm, installs your app, and sees your name on the home screen.

The first two change what the screens look like. The third changes what the operative installs, and that is where the consequences sit.

Finding it in the store

Tell a new starter to download the app and you have set a spelling test. The vendor's name is one they have never heard. The store shows several apps with similar names, and the text with the link went to last year's number.

Under the firm's own name, the instruction is three words: search for us. The name is already on the payslip, the van and the site hoarding, so there is nothing new to remember. The app that comes up is the right one.

Trust at the gate, and on a personal phone

A work app often goes on the operative's own phone. That is a real request: storage, a sign-in, and permission to use the camera and location. Asked by a company they have never heard of, it reads as a stranger's request. Asked by their employer, it reads as the employer's system, which is what it is.

The questions that follow are the right ones either way. What does it record, when, and who sees it? Under the firm's name, those questions go to the firm, which decides the answers. A vendor's name on the icon sends them to a company the operative has no relationship with.

An operative is asked to trust the name on the icon. It should be the name on the payslip.

Agency labour and the first morning

Agency and new-start labour is where any site system is tested hardest. Somebody arrives at seven on a Monday, is inducted, and needs to be on the record before the first break.

The instruction sent the evening before can be exact: download the firm's app from the App Store or Google Play and bring the phone. The induction then ends with the app installed and the person signed in. An operative booked to several contractors in a season may carry several apps. The one named after this week's firm is the one they can find again at the gate.

When the engagement ends, the office withdraws access centrally. The operative is left with an icon to delete, and no account with a supplier they never chose.

What the client and the main contractor see

A principal contractor's site manager watching your gang clock in sees your firm's app on their phones. The documents produced from it arrive on your letterhead. None of that wins work on its own, but it is consistent with a firm that runs its own system rather than borrowing one.

The same applies to a client, where a firm chooses to give its clients an app. A customer checking progress in an app under your name is dealing with your firm throughout. A portal in the browser does the same job for firms that prefer it.

What to ask a vendor before accepting the word branded

Six questions separate the three arrangements, and each has a short answer.

1. Is the app published on the App Store and Google Play under our name and icon, or is it your app with our logo inside?
2. What does an operative see before signing in: our name or yours?
3. Who handles store submissions, reviews, and the changes Apple and Google make to their rules each year?
4. Does a new module or permission reach the phone without a new release, and can it be granted to one person and not another?
5. Do documents, notifications and QR code posters carry our branding as well as the app?
6. Is an app for our clients included, optional or unavailable, and is it branded the same way?

Then ask for the store link to a live customer's app, not a screenshot. Search for it yourself, and see exactly what an operative would see.

Where to start, on Monday

Search the App Store and Google Play for the app your operatives use today, the way a new starter would, knowing only the name on their payslip. Note what comes up first, whose name is on it, and how many near misses sit around it.

If you are still choosing, run the same search for each vendor on the list. Five minutes on a phone tells you what your next hundred inductions will look like.