By Kit Kyte, CEO, Checkit
The ‘Great Resignation’ has shone a new light on employee experience, yet key deskless workers, who represent 80 per cent of the global workforce, have been left behind. Employee experience strategies have focused on desk-based knowledge workers; there has been a huge investment in their experience, from productivity tools to live chat. Meanwhile, deskless teams lack digital capabilities in their workplaces. That needs to change if employers want to attract and retain essential frontline workers in sectors such as healthcare, hospitality and retail, where staff shortages are beginning to bite.
Deskless workers form the critical staffing and service component of many industries, from catering to cleaning. They are critical to business success, often operating under stress on the frontline to deliver vital services. If anyone was in doubt, the pandemic proved the essential contribution of deskless workers in providing critical services. Yet, that appreciation is not evident in the structures and systems that exist to support them. Generally, they are expected to manage their workloads with paper checklists, spreadsheets, and clunky DIY technology and apps. Recent research has even found that this proportion of the workforce is receiving just one per cent of a company’s software spend.
The digital experience of deskless workers is completely at odds with what they have at home, or what their corporate colleagues enjoy. That’s a problem because deskless workers are walking away in their millions — we are in the grip of the ‘Great Resignation’. Last year, in the leisure and hospitality industries alone, 740,000 employees found their jobs too stressful, and subsequently quit. Leaders must, therefore, establish a more productive and meaningful work experience for their deskless employees if they want to attract and retain talent. These employees need greater digital interaction, autonomy, recognition and a working experience fit for the times we are in.
From Employee Experience to Operational Experience and Back Again
Now consider the strategic impact of poor digital experiences for frontline employees. Outdated reporting and communication methods mean operational leaders are left without the insight they need to respond to changing circumstances, roll out new processes and make better decisions. Operational leaders rely on their deskless workers as their eyes, ears, and hands.
Just as much as deskless workers suffer from a poor analogue experience, their leaders suffer from a lack of actionable metrics across the spectrum of activity: Up-to-date stock and staffing levels, equipment status, temperature and asset security data — you name it, if it’s recorded on paper and provided retrospectively, it’s not helping deliver for the organisation, and can’t be used to create a better employee experience.
Where information is filed away, the flow becomes disjointed and travels very slowly, making analysis difficult and inhibiting the organisation’s ability to make changes. In a world where rapidly shifting conditions demand new levels of vigilance and reinvention, barriers to agility become significant disadvantages across any business function.
Businesses implementing an EX strategy for today’s world must lean on data-driven digital footprints and support to match the pace of change. For frontline employees, this translates not only to greater support, training and personal development opportunities, but greater safety and reduced risk. Employers can ensure safer working conditions by reducing the likelihood of errors and accidents if they have real-time visibility of what’s happening on the frontline. By contrast, legacy paperwork processes and reporting methods are simply slow and prone to errors, leaving both employees and businesses encumbered by ‘dark operations’, where important frontline activity is hidden from view.
Forward-looking organisations are seizing the opportunity. Digitalisation of deskless activity is enabling leaders to provide clear and up-to-the-minute guidance to their deskless workforces. Take digital assistants, as an example. They prompt, guide and capture frontline activity via mobile device in the hands of the worker. Bolstered by predictive analytics, the technology can deliver data back to managers, flagging areas of concern before they arise, while providing a valuable feedback loop, mitigating risk while supporting employees’ growth.
Supporting Employee Engagement and Experience
For an HR leader looking to create better deskless employee experiences, the digitalisation of workflows not only improves engagement but allows procedures to be tested and continually improved. The latest solutions promote connectivity between frontline workers and their head office colleagues. They also bring smarter capabilities to the assets and building systems that deskless workers interact with. Business intelligence dashboards tie these data points together to enhance decision-making at all levels.
This is a transformation that doesn’t have to be difficult. The power of cloud computing bypasses any need for a multi-vendor, multi-year rip-and-replace project. Budgets must be balanced against expected risks and rewards. And if the experiences of COVID, disparate workforces, and supply chain disruptions are anything to go by, most businesses will recognize the need for better connectivity and collaboration across their workforces. They will also recognise the need to improve the employee experience to retain talent and enhance the organisation as a great place to work.
A digital footprint based on solid employee and operational key metrics can propel greater value for the employee, the business, and customers too.
