Ways Businesses can Retain their Deskless Workers to Reduce Costs

It is often difficult for companies with many deskless workers to retain talent. Studies indicate that shop floor employees in sectors like retail and manufacturing are less devoted and are more likely to switch employment than their corporate deskbound colleagues.  

You probably keep track of your employee turnover but do you understand its actual costs?

The high costs of lost engagement

Losing workers is expensive because companies pay direct exit costs when employees leave and incur additional costs to recruit and train new hires. 

Creating job descriptions, advertising, recruitment fees, interviewing candidates, onboarding and training new hires, knowledge loss, lowered morale, decreased productivity, and having employees take on more work while a position is vacant are just a few of the costs related to employee turnover. 

A certain level of employee turnover is always inevitable; some employees retire, shift career paths or move abroad. Leaving these types of motivations aside, oftentimes the turnover is caused by a lack of employee engagement. 

So, how do you engage your deskless workers to reduce costs?

Retaining deskless workers must be a priority 

Since turnover is not great for business, there needs to be a plan in place to rethink how you connect with the deskless workforce. The best approach to engage with your employees from the very moment they join your company is by:

1. Streamlining onboarding that is customized around the new hires so they get access to all relevant information and know what they are working towards.
   
   
2. Developing employee competencies with role-based training programs that are critical to career development and improve job satisfaction.
   
   
3. Improving feedback options and offering the employee a voice through surveys, service desk, and modern communication tools to feel heard and appreciated at work.
   
   
4. Providing easy access to company information like relevant news, shifts, chats, alerts, FAQs, handbooks, and other features of a modern-day intranet.
   
   
5. Making complex tasks straightforward by simplifying existing business processes and giving intuitive access to third-party systems that already exist in your IT stack — think SAP, Microsoft, Workday, etc.
   

Download our white paper and get access to 15 Strategies to enhance Employee Retention.  

Sounds complicated? Not at all

It can be tricky to provide the right tools for engagement; deskless workers often find themselves overloaded with information and tasks through various channels like paper, computers, and phones that don’t fit their way of working.

Your deskless workers are mobile so you must tap into their needs and deliver the resources they require. The most effective way of doing this is by taking advantage of what almost every employee already has access to — a smartphone.  

Employee-specific apps are the most effective for engaging deskless workers but they are also highly fitting for hybrid working, deskbound employees, and of course, the millennials, who prefer mobile-friendly ways to interact with their employers.

How Empact helps retain talents 

With Empact you will get all you need to retain your deskless workers. It is the all-in-one go-to app for employee engagement that allows your deskless workers to experience: 

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 third-party applications and 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. 

We believe employee engagement is key and must be addressed, but it is up to you to calculate the ROI and decide if Empact is a good investment for lowering employee attrition.

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.