The Future of Work for our Frontliners

I don’t know about you, but I am starting to get a bit tired of those endless discussions about “The Future of Work”.

Much of that debate centers around technology and WHERE we perform our work.

But the future of work is actually about people.

When we talk about it, we talk about humans — how we work, with whom we work, and yes - also where we work.

The Future Of Work is human and must be humane.

It is more about people than location!

Now is the time to take a fresh look at the employer/employee relationship and the fitting tool to strengthen that relationship.

?

Hybrid work gets all the airtime

And none of those debates include the frontline workers.

It cannot be overlooked how in these challenging times when organizations had to adapt to the new now, frontline workers played a strategic role by using their skill sets to deliver efficient customer service. Yes, they even had to absorb their customers’ anxiety.

Let’s talk about our frontline sheroes and heroes.

They’re on the ground producing and delivering goods, servicing machines, selling to customers, ringing people up, cleaning rooms, caring for guests and patients.

They’re working hands-on with the things that matter most for the survival of your business: your products and your customers.

Most of them don’t perform their jobs predominately sitting at a desk (=?‘deskless workforce’).

In fact,?they’re having the most interaction with our customers.?They deliver that customer experience our organizations want to be known for.

Why are we not talking more about how to connect, inform and motivate more of our deskless workers who often feel disconnected at the frontlines and need great employee experiences just like those who sit at a desk?

They are certainly NOT the minority!

?

Frontliners - the majority of the global workforce

There are an astonishing?2.2 to 2.7 billion deskless or frontline workers?(60 to 80% of the global workforce of 3.6 to 3.8 billion).

If that number surprises you, think about all the industries this includes retail & grocery, healthcare, hospitality & food services, construction, manufacturing, logistics, utilities and your friendly bus driver.

It is far too easy to forget about the remote workers because we’re not seeing them every day in the office.

?????????? “???????????? ???? ????????” ???????????????????? ???????????? ???? ?????? ???????????? ???????? ???????????????????? ???????????? ???? ?????? ???????????? ???????? ??????????.

For them, hybrid work remains a far-fetched dream. They don't have the privilege of choosing the place where they work.

But we have the opportunity to make a difference in how they work.

Sadly,?employee turnover in deskless professions is quite high while job satisfaction is quite low.

There are a number of reasons for this including work/life harmony challenges, wage dissatisfaction and a low level of enjoyment of the job itself.

But there is more to it … let's look at that here.

?

Our High-Social-Value workers have different needs

Yes, we’ve always known that frontline workers have hard jobs.

It’s at the front lines where the rubber meets the road and where the magic happens within our organizations.

But do we know that the good people who work on the front lines still depend on outdated?analog?processes like paper and bulletin boards for the information they need to do their jobs?

This?outdated employee experience?makes hard jobs even harder.

?

Sadly, our deskless workers have been overlooked and pushed to the bottom of the communication pile for way too long.?They've wrongly been excluded in?favor?of employees in central HQs or other desk-based locations.

Our customer experience?sheroes & heroes deserve better!

It’s time to change the narrative & provide deskless workers with the same benefits,?tools?and workplace flexibility that is seen in desk-bound work environments.

After all, many of them are really?“High Social Value Workers”?as we have finally realized during the pandemic.

Failing to address their different needs has been a significant oversight in terms of the organization’s overall performance.

And their needs are very different …

Frontline workers have needs and priorities that aren’t always easily understood by those on the outside.

Frontliners value things office workers might be suffering from in abundance. Some of them are so spoilt for choice (email, Intranet, MS-teams, Sharepoint, Slack, …) that they don’t know which channel to use for what kind of communication.

Frontliners often don’t even have a corporate email address!

They don’t have such a high IT literacy either. We have to think about the usability of the product differently. We have to make the?software?super, super simple and easy to use.

Bad software can sometimes drive away our frontline workers faster than a neon, polyester uniform in Singapore's outdoors.

An old, clunky legacy system that’s difficult to use is like nails on a chalkboard for our teams. It’s a slow, agonizing irritation that eventually crescendos into an “I can’t take it anymore” moment.

Could this 'technology neglect' lead to feeling disconnected and like a second-class employee? Could it be one of the reasons why only?13% of the worldwide workforce feels engaged at work?(compared to 35% of their desk-based counterparts)?

Certainly, the technology you provide to your frontline teams sends a message to them about?where they stand in the grand scheme of the company’s priorities.

They simply deserve?the best tools?to perform their work at the highest level.

Careful though, as digital tools for frontline workers?have to?meet needs that either aren’t present or aren’t as pressing for desk workers.

Not?all of?the solutions a frontline worker interacts with every day are easily accessible on the front line and when you put them all together the question of accessibility becomes even more complex.

Logging in, printing, gathering around bulletin boards, keeping data up to date -?all of?these things become more challenging the more systems we have in place to enable, empower, inspire and guide our front line.

And it’s here where?a lot of companies go wrong — they give desk workers & frontline workers the same tools & basically say, “Make it work.”

Let's no longer fall into this trap.

Giving our frontline team a communication platform built for desktop workers is like giving a fisherman a baseball bat.

It doesn’t do the job, and quite frankly, it ends up being more of a burden to carry around than a useful tool that makes their life easier.

Frontline workers have unique communication needs and thus?require?a communication platform that is built for them.

Looking for an edge?

You and your company might have had an edge in the past.

But nowadays that edge is?arbitra-edged away - excuse that PUN.

Any competitor can copy your products, your processes and your solutions.

Copying your corporate culture is much tougher – if not impossible.

Companies that have already “human-upped” their culture are leading the charge.

Particularly as unemployment falls to structural levels, and freelance options become more and more feasible and widespread, the power balance will continue to shift toward individuals. Employees have their choice of employer, and employers must qualify to earn their time and effort, not the other way around.

The mandate for leaders is to show people why working for you matters to them, in terms of the financial, intellectual, social, and emotional rewards of the work.

We spend too much time trying to be “good” when good is often merely average.

To be great we must be different.

?

? How is your organization different??

?

In a crowded, competitive, commoditized, distracted world, it's good to be better, but it's better to be different.

Different is better than better.

Different is easier than better.

It is easy to be different. But it is very tough to be better than your competitors.

The question is, how are YOU different?

Because same is lame.

Without deskless workers, our economy would come to a standstill. We would have no food, healthcare, transportation, childcare, or products to buy. Let's together build a new deskless reality that is not a second-class version of deskbound work but, instead, second to none. We owe it to the people who power our lives.

?

"Winning the war for talent depends on the deskless worker experience YOU offer."