4 Stubborn Deskless-Workforce Pains and How Industrial Display Screens Help Fix Them

Industries that rely on a deskless workforce have quite the challenge. On one hand, deskless workers need to be mobile, on-the-move and unchained from a desk-based environment to be the lifeblood of productivity. In industries like emergency services, deskless workers are heroes—literally lifesavers. On the other hand, they also need to be intimately connected into operational narratives to do what they do brilliantly.

What can managers in deskless industries like transportation, logistics, manufacturing and emergency services do to balance all considerations?

“We give our deskless workforce a company cell phone.”

That’s all well and good, but how are you communicating with an entire team at the same time? How distracted or frustrated do teams get when notifications are constantly going off in their pocket, not all of which are relevant?

A cell phone in every pocket just isn’t scalable.

Here we’ll address the top challenges deskless employers face and how workplace digital signage can help remedy them:

Maintaining operational participation and collaboration in a deskless workforce

Deskless workers don’t share the benefit of digital connectedness with office-based colleagues that continually have their heads in Slack, social media and email.

Deskless workers are constantly on the move, dealing often reactively to emerging situations and circumstances.

As such, patchy means for sustaining collaboration and operational coordination can cause operational breakdown. Not ideal when  an estimated 75% of employees consider collaboration and teamwork mission-critical.

Now consider that 80% of the world’s workforce is made up of deskless workers. 

So, how can employers start to better-incentivise continual, efficient collaboration among deskless employees?

Digital signage and industrial display screens throughout deskless work environments is a powerful way of enriching deskless workers with key operational and even company-culture information at the right time—in a way that’s not distracting, redundant or invasive.

For example…

Company-event reminders

Health and safety protocols

Polls and announcements

Key operational data

Even performance and KPI analytics


All of these information streams can be custom-carried and responsively adapted into every department or region.

Closing the lid on high turnover rates 

Did you know that supermarkets and quick-service restaurant workers have a 100% turnover each year? These alerting stats prove once again that the retention of employees is an ongoing battle for deskless employers.

Of course, there are a number of factors that drive high labour turnover; some industries are naturally more prone to it than others and certain industries accept high turnover as part of the landscape.

That said, even the most stubborn and explicable of labour-turnover rates can be mitigated with a smart approach—one that involves incentivizing  employees’ to find, achieve and sustain their full potential.

One such smart approach involves giving employees a sense of individual and collective purpose—and, according to  Deskless Report by Nudge, ‘purpose’ is the #2 driver of engagement for employees.

What does ‘giving employees a sense of purpose’ look like? And what’s the business impact? In simple terms, it looks like this.

Increased engagement + morale boost + increased productivity = 21% increased profit, according to Gallup.

OK. And how are deskless industries currently driving increased engagement, morale boosts and increased productivity?

For logistics, transportation, healthcare, emergency services and other deskless industries, the answer is a foggy one. For others, there is no answer to that question.

Workplace digital signage and industrial display screens provide the answer  by giving deskless teams a reliable, real-time, accessible and discreet stream of relevant information that fuels their purpose.

The net benefit is a domino effect of focused engagement that fuels morale and productivity. 

Delivering effective new-starter and ongoing training in a deskless wokforce

While desk-based teams also experience productivity down-time for training, more desk-based training resources are being leveraged in office environments. This approach brings self-service training flexibility that deskless teams just can’t access. 

Now, get this: over 60% of Generation X and Millennials indicated that they would collaborate more through visual means - according to 2022 Workplace Collab Stats.

Digital signage and industrial display screens provide exactly that, doubling up as a digital, non-invasive training resource that deskless workers can access, without their own mouse and desk.

Pre-recorded training can be broadcasted for an entire workforce, or custom-channeled into regions, teams and departments.

That way, deskless employees can digest relevant training information on the move, without need for desk interventions and productivity disruptions.

Time to integrate all of your teams into relevant and responsive ops narratives, with industrial display screens? 

With digital signage solutions and industrial display screens, that’s exactly what you can achieve scalably and cost efficiently—all with the help of app integrations and a content curation hub your ops tea control to distribute to deskless employees wherever they are. 

While deskless employers face tons of challenges, employee engagement and satisfaction shouldn’t be a part of that list

You don’t have to face these challenges alone. ScreenCloud’s affordable digital signage solutions can help you centralize your employee communication and engagement, while scaling your workforce’s presence, morale and productivity.

Contact ScreenCloud to arrange a discovery demo and explore the most suitable, flexible workplace digital signage setup custom-molded to your deskless environment and operational performance needs.