We talk a lot about issues affecting office workers and professionals, from work at home to generative AI skills. Many of these workers can partake in flexible arrangements — have laptop. will travel. However, this is only 20% of the workforce. Not enough attention is being paid to the “deskless” or frontline workers and professionals who make up the other 80%. What’s the key to helping them be more productivity, and want to stick around?
Let’s start with digital tools. “Frontline workers have historically been underserved regarding digital tools and solutions, exposing the inequity of experience across the workforce,” according to a report out of Deloitte.
This makes attracting and keeping these valuable employees more of a challenge. “Shifts in the economic climate and workforce trends have created a challenging environment for engaging and retaining frontline workers,” the Deloitte report’s authors, John Brownridge and Brad Gray, state. Only 23% of frontline workers believe they have access to the technology they need to be productive, and 80% of frontline employees say that their company provides few connection opportunities at work, the study shows.
Design is everything. “The lack of integration between digital tools and existing workflows and poor user design can create additional work for frontline workers and make it harder for them to perform their jobs,” Brownridge and Gray write. “For example, if a hospital rolls out a new electronic health record system for nurses to use but does not appropriately design the experience for how nurses need it to work, both the workload of nurses and the potential for data entry errors into patient records would increase, with potentially dire consequences.”
“When frontline workers are provided a thoughtful and strategic mix of technology to perform their jobs, productivity is estimated to increase on average by 22%, the Deloitte co-authors report.
But is there more to the mix than simply boosting productivity through digital technology? A new report out of Boston Consulting Group suggest a non-technical path as well.
Deskless employees — in health care, education, and manufacturing — tend to have jobs that are “physically draining, lower-salaried, and often undervalued by communities despite being essential to their function.”
More attention needs to go to “increasing the enjoyment that nurses, teachers, factory workers, and other deskless employees experience at work,” states the report, prepared by BCG’s Deborah Lovich and Gabrielle Giessen. “Deskless workers who enjoy their work are 62% less likely to consider a new job than those who don’t. Those committed to staying in their jobs spend nearly eight hours per week on toilful task — offset by 18 hours of joyful work.”
Deskless workers “need to be at a physical location or asset to conduct most of their tasks,” they add.
“Enjoying work matters even more for retention of deskless workers than it does of office workers: enjoyment can cut deskless workers’ attrition by 62%, compared with 49% for office workers,” the BCG study added. “Retail, logistics, and education have some of the lowest levels of enjoyment despite having, on average, older and longer-tenured workers than other industries — workers who we have found typically enjoy their work the most.”
Further, BCG “found that employees feel significantly less connected to their organization and colleagues and less supported by their managers, have lower levels of pride in their work, and perceive less fairness in their workplace.”
In addition, the survey found “that at the task level, employees consistently report lower joy scores across all tasks than managers, and that they spend more of their time on lower-joy tasks.”
Questions that need to be asked of deskless workers include: “‘What drives joy in your day?’ ‘What is most important to you, day in and day out?’ By understanding the drivers of joy and sources of toil, leaders can make data-led choices and realize the true value of a motivated and joyful workforce,” the BCG authors urge.
