Why your deskless employees don’t read your newsletters, and how to fix it

To start off this week’s newsletter, I thought it’d be nice to share this quote from Kevin ter Maten. Kevin is Head of Marketing at Verhage, a large quick-service restaurant chain and a member of the Oneteam community.

“We used to send newsletters to our various stakeholders, without offering the possibility to? interact with them. We had no idea if anyone read it or if it was well-received. We once ran a test and added a note on page 4 of the newsletter saying that they would get a free box of fries if they responded. Guess what? We received just 2 responses.”

This quote perfectly describes a common challenge for organizations with a majority of deskless employees. Connecting and engaging with the deskless workforce is difficult, but we’re here to fix it!?

Why is it that no one reads your newsletters or other communications? We give you 4 possible reasons.

#1 Fragmented communication

First of all, it might have to do with the amount of channels you use to communicate. Despite having the best intentions, it might work counterproductive. Most organizations have different solutions for every part of the employee experience. Whether it’s for internal communication, onboarding, eLearning, surveys, forms, or checklists, you name it.

Employees are required to work with different systems and apps for what is mostly their part-time job. This logically leads to an information overload, where it’s hard to ensure information reaches the right person at the right time. The fragmented employee experience clearly leads to low engagement, and your fun newsletter will be left unread. You can easily solve this by unifying all parts of the employee experience into one platform.

#2 Solutions that aren’t made for your deskless workforce

Most deskless employees don’t have access to a business email address, and don’t want to get spammed outside of work hours via WhatsApp messages, or your newsletter in their personal inbox. Next to causing an information overload, you should be cautious to respect the work-life balance of your employees. Trim down the amount of communication channels, and keep work at work with a dedicated internal communication solution.?

#3 Outdated solutions

Have a look at your current systems, and then have a look at your younger generation workforce. Does the accessibility and user experience fit this day and age? Millennials and GenZ employees are used to having their smartphone with them all-day, why not make them use them for work purposes too? We’re all quite spoiled these days if it comes to user experience, so when choosing your internal communication tool, make sure to pick one that has a modern look and feel.

#4 One-way communication

Just like Kevin mentions at the beginning of the newsletter, it’s hard to track engagement and barely impossible to encourage interaction if you send out a newsletter. The same goes for business updates via email, printed onboarding manuals, post-its on your bulletin board. It’s all one-way communication. The good old one-way communication from the HQ to the work floor belongs to the history books. The new way of connecting with your deskless employees should embrace a culture where two-way communication is the norm. Make sure to make this top priority when looking for a suitable solution.?

Hopefully this helps you to improve the engagement levels on your newsletters and other comms. You better watch out with running similar tests like Kevin after implementing these learnings, as you might end up buying a lot of fries! ??