The Importance of Bridging the Technology Gap for Deskless Workers

In today’s digital world, many deskless workers are almost forgotten.  

According to a study published by Forbes, 80% of the workforce is considered deskless. Yet just 1% of software funding is allocated to these employees.

Disconnected employees are bad for business

The problem is that if you spend your days in headquarters, it’s easy to forget about the people on the shop floor, in factories, and out in the field.  

With more people choosing to go down the deskless employee career path, it’s time for management to put a solid plan in place to keep their workforce engaged. It’s no secret that disconnected employees will end up costing your business more money in the long run due to a lack of engagement, low productivity, and high turnover.

Luckily, there’s a solution for connecting with deskless workers, which is going mobile.

Enable your workforce with mobile devices

The real purpose of mobile devices is to empower workers with the tools they need whenever and wherever they need them. Your policy should reflect that purpose, not simply discourage mobile device use. Especially with the younger generation, who are used to communicating and collaborating from afar with mobile solutions, and they expect to be equipped with modern tools that increase quality and productivity at work. Managers across industries must adapt to this trend and consider how to empower their workers’ device usage rather than restricting it.

Invest in company devices or let the employees bring their own devices?

Employees generally request the convenience of having one device for personal and work use. This setup is more convenient than having two smartphones to keep up with. Providing devices for all employees can significantly increase your overall costs. Additionally, not all employees may be comfortable or well-versed in handling the devices you provide.

Having a “Bring Your Own Device” policy can significantly reduce your expenses of purchasing devices for each employee, providing training for using new devices, and hiring hardware supporters. Moreover, people can bring the device they’re accustomed to and start being productive right away.  

Once your employees are allowed to bring their own devices to work, certain questions need to be answered, including how personal use is handled, how security risks are minimized, whether the costs of devices and subscriptions are subsidized, what happens if the devices are damaged during working hours, and how are the employees without their own devices kept in the loop.    

It’s certainly possible to manage devices and applications in the “Bring Your Own Device” model. The alternatives are to invest in devices for work purposes only or offer corporate-owned devices that the employees are allowed to use for personal use as well, and where the company gains greater control and security.  

Choose the right software to engage your workforce

Once you have decided on the right mobile device strategy, you will need the right software to engage the workforce. There are software enterprises out there designed to take on this task, including SAP, Microsoft, Workday, and many others. The issue that prevails here is that employees still have to browse through these platforms to get work done. 

The importance of employee engagement can’t be overstated. It improves work culture, reduces turnover, increases productivity, builds better work and customer relationships, and affects profits. Why not have all these attributes in one place? 

The Empact solution brings all your day-to-day business processes into a single app for you to create momentum for the individual worker and increase overall productivity — ensuring that the employees feel engaged with what they’re doing. 

The all-in-one solution  

There is so much you can do with Empact to inspire, engage, empower, and retain your deskless workers. It’s the all-in-one go-to app that gives your employees a unique experience with: 

1. Personalized, interactive, and gamified onboarding and ongoing training. 
2. Relevant news, shifts, chats, alerts, and other features of a modern-day intranet. 
3. Intuitive task management functionality that helps managers and employees to collaborate and share knowledge. 
4. Easy access to company information like instructions, product catalogs, quality procedures, personal handbooks, contacts, and FAQs. 
5. Several feedback options such as surveys and service desk features encourage dialogue and collect actionable input. 

By using Empact, you will also get more out of your investments in enterprise software like ERP, CRM, HCM, and CMS platforms. We make complicated tasks straightforward to do on a mobile device by simplifying existing business processes, workforce management, and customer data that is already present in your IT stack.

If you wish to learn more about our efforts in strategically designing an employee engagement app that adapts perfectly to your industry, feel free to contact us. We will happily assist you in creating a business case and provide a solution that fits your organization.