Don’t Leave Essential Workers Behind in Digital Transformation

Essential and frontline workers are at the forefront of every industry. Many interface directly with consumers like receptionists, customer service representatives and retail employees; others power the backend of business like construction workers, warehouse employees, and nurses. Unfortunately, many of these critical workers lack the digital tools to perform their jobs, often to the detriment of a company’s productivity and bottom line. This is in part due to clunky legacy technology platforms and disparate systems that make integrating with the latest communications technologies a time-intensive and costly process.

That’s why many companies today are embracing centralized tools like digital intranets that integrate with various communication and knowledge-sharing platforms. These systems serve as a bridge between the employees in the field and the business, and give employees access to their colleagues and company assets from their mobile devices, anytime, anywhere. These technologies help essential and frontline employees communicate more effectively and exchange information from the field in order to maintain alignment with corporate objectives.

HR Technology News: TecHRseries Interview with Jeanne Gray, Chief People Officer at Aura

Communication Challenges & The Digital Divide

Unfortunately, the global pandemic shed light on the fact that frontline workers lack the collaboration and communication technologies that many of their in-office peers have at their disposal.

Frontline workers face new demands, but only 23% say they have the proper access to the technology and tools needed to complete their jobs correctly. Even worse, 77% say that while technology is essential to their job, they lack the appropriate or adequate means to actually perform their jobs well(Digital Transformation).

This inequality creates a digital divide through which office workers are empowered to become more agile, collaborate better and access secure information faster. In contrast, frontline employees feel hindered and blocked at every turn.

Managers overwhelmingly (87%) feel that their organizations will see higher success levels when frontline employees can make on-the-spot decisions. Still, those essential workers often have opposite sentiments in their ability to make those calls.

In fact, 47% of all frontline managers and workers feel less valued and essential to business operations than ever before. Since over 70% of all essential workers cannot work from home, these workers are more disproportionately on the front lines of crisis communication and operate as the face of your company as it works to navigate complicated situations. And about one-third of all frontline employees say the technology their companies do have doesn’t make their work easier – often, it makes it more challenging.

So, how can you be sure that essential workers are prioritized?

A connected workforce is a happy workforce. Bottom line is your frontline workers need to feel as connected and aligned to the business as your other employees do. Research shows that when digital technologies are implemented with input from all levels of your organization, they experience a 40% increase in frontline worker adoption.

Your digital transformation initiatives should not be designed in a silo, solely focused on your office workers. Frontline workers should be considered vital stakeholders, instead of end-users, who give input during all levels of the digital transformation journey.

Ultimately, if frontline employees are engaged and satisfied in their jobs, it will lead to higher satisfaction levels from customers. Your company will also experience less employee turnover, and your bottom line will see increases across the board.

Tips for ensuring frontline workers aren’t left behind

First, ensure your employees have access to productivity tools.

Without the right resources, frontline employees are at a distinct disadvantage from the start. So, how can you give workers access to the necessary tools?

Many frontline workers don’t have corporate email or a corporate identity, but most have mobile apps and can get push notifications on a job site. Leverage social intranet and mobile capabilities to give frontline employees the access they need to not only stay connected but also perform their jobs safely effectively and efficiently. A social intranet offers various internal communication capabilities like targeted communication and executive contact to foster more streamlined and direct collaboration between all levels of your organization.

Next, expand your lines of communication.

Frontline employees often don’t have the luxury of being available to email throughout the traditional 9-5 workday like an office employee would. They also are not often available for day-to-day process and procedure updates, so it is difficult to keep them in the loop. So, how can you openly communicate with frontline workers?

Extend two-way communication to your entire organization: Reach out specifically to solicit feedback from outside your department, including ways for workers at every level of the company to surface problems and highlight hangups in processes. Using a social intranet, you can send out surveys and polls to collect information on issues to ensure you receive feedback from everyone in your organization. When you stay connected with your frontline employees, you can maintain a more agile business model.

Conduct research and create a wish list of the top internal communications tools. You may not be able to implement all of them, but be sure to deploy those that make the most sense for all of your employees – including your frontline workers.

Finally, share knowledge with everyone.

Seldom (if at all) does information pertain to a single team. Your departments are interlinked and rely on each other for their success, so it’s vital to ensure everyone is updated with the right information when they need it. So, how can you share knowledge with frontline workers?

Extend knowledge sharing past silos or insulated teams. Knowledge should bubble up to managers, but it should also expand across departments and locations (such as retail, healthcare and headquarters.) Creating a robust internal resource for knowledge ensures that your company will not lag behind if top knowledge holders leave, and it allows your workers to grow their own levels of knowledge and internal fact-check. This enables your workers, both frontline and office, to be prepared, make decisions and perform according to your business goals.

HR Technology News: TecHRseries Interview with Hermina Khara, VP of People & Head of Talent at Alida

What changes are needed?

You do not need to reinvent the wheel or have your IT department build a whole new infrastructure to exceed your frontline employees’ needs.

Instead, your company should consider a strategy shift that focuses more on your essential workers’ jobs and requirements. Ensure these high-priority employees are not an afterthought by adapting existing tools to their unique needs and leveraging new technology to connect them to your company’s core mission.

Explore the State of Technology Sales and Tips to Streamline Marketing and Sales Efficiencies with Leaders from Zilliant, Pipedrive, TeamViewer, Acoustic and more!