Digital Transformation for the Deskless Workforce: Harnessing Workplace Digital Signage

While COVID-19 has changed everyone’s lives in ways we never could have predicted, it has introduced certain changes that are necessary and well overdue, especially when it comes to managing a deskless workforce. 

The pandemic compelled businesses to fast-track their digital transformation strategies to meet the current challenges of remote work and lockdowns and respond adequately to shifting customer demands. 

While this has been a long-time-coming change, these investments in digital tools and online platforms have largely benefited deskbound workers, leaving the large majority of the global deskless workforce unaccounted for in digital transformation. 

Considering that the deskless workforce comprises about 80% of workers globally, as well as its notoriously high levels of employee turnover, it’s essential for businesses to adopt more inclusive digital transformation strategies that benefit and support deskless workers in the ways they require. 

Using workplace digital signage is one way of effectively reaching and supporting deskless workers.

Digital Transformation Policies Are Failing The Deskless Workforce

Since the beginning of the pandemic and the transition to remote work, companies have invested in SaaS tools, online platforms, and apps that aim to keep employees engaged, connected, and productive. However, the majority of these tools are designed to support workers behind a desk who use a screen or their mobile devices to communicate with colleagues.

These tools and systems can’t be harnessed by deskless workers who spend their workdays largely on their feet, either on a manufacturing floor or in a hospital ward, school, and so on. These workers don’t have time to constantly check their mobile devices and the majority of them don’t own a work email address. 

On top of this, most deskless workers work longer shifts and spend large parts of their day either alone or minimally interacting with others, which can lead to higher levels of stress, burnout, and unhappiness at work. 

The stress and added pressure that has come from the disruptions of the pandemic have only added to the low levels of employee satisfaction around the world.   

It’s clear that digital transformation strategies adopted by businesses have largely geared towards supporting desk-based workers, while failing to account for the needs of the deskless workforce, many of whom work long hours and take on additional risk, being unable to perform their jobs remotely. 

Organizations who employ a deskless workforce need to do more to support and motivate their employees, especially as they navigate the uncertain landscape of the “new normal”. 

How Can Workplace Digital Signage Fill the Gap and Benefit Deskless Workers?

Digital signage is a communications system consisting of multiple screens that display visual and text-based messaging and communications. Workplace digital signage can be harnessed to boost end-to-end communications across a company, whether the intention is to inform, educate, entertain, or celebrate. 

Here are a few of the benefits that workplace digital signage can bring to your deskless workforce. 

Connect better with your deskless workforce

For deskless employees on the job, staying on top of important company announcements and updates can be frustrating, especially if companies use bulletin boards and sticky-note methods that are easy to overlook. 

A lack of cohesive communication between companies and their employees can increase employee dissatisfaction at work and hamper productivity. 

Workplace digital signage can be used to seamlessly fill the communication gap between businesses and their deskless employees. Digital signage can be used to share important information, news updates, birthday messages, and company achievements with the entire workforce at the same time. 

Encourage on-the-job-learning and engagement

Employees who are engaged while at work are more motivated and productive. Workplace digital signage can play a key role in facilitating employee engagement in the workplace by displaying interactive games, general knowledge questions, facts of the day, and employee tutorials and educational short-courses that encourage employees to improve their working knowledge. 

Reinforce health and safety protocols

Employee safety is a top priority for most businesses who operate in frontline industries like manufacturing and distribution, and getting employees to follow certain workplace safety protocols correctly is a common challenge. 

With workplace digital signage, employees can receive consistent messages relating to important safety procedures that must be followed. This is key to increasing employee adoption rates of health and safety protocols, as opposed to dedicating one or two days a year to outlining said procedures.

Make every employee feel supported and valued

The nature of work for a deskless worker is generally long and draining. Despite the essential nature of their work, there is little recognition for the role deskless employees play in frontline services.

Making every employee feel important and valued within a company can greatly improve employees’ happiness and sense of purpose in the workplace. 

Companies can use workplace digital signage to celebrate and show appreciation for their deskless workforce. Sharing employee birthdays, milestone achievements, and team successes with the rest of the company builds stronger working relationships between employees and the company and helps to create a positive workplace culture that employees will want to remain a part of. 

Conclusion

As companies continue to embrace digital transformation, they shouldn’t overlook the needs of their deskless workers. Digital transformation shouldn’t exclude the deskless workforce and transformation strategies should be implemented that bring specific benefits to deskless employees. 

ScreenCloud’s cloud-based digital signage software can help you reach and maximize engagement with your deskless workforce with ease.  Book a demo with us to learn how we can help you supercharge your deskless employees using digital signage.