Your Frontline Workers Are Ready For Better Tech

Even though frontline workers outnumber desked workers by nearly 4 to 1, they consistently report lacking the technology to do their jobs effectively. In a large, distributed workforce, this lack of repeatable, tech-enabled workflows creates downstream issues in customer service, employee engagement, and revenue. 

Read on to find out why the future depends on frontline workers, what they need from tech, and how to equip your mobile workforce for success as it continues to grow.

Who are frontline workers?  

Frontline workers, also known as mobile workers, do their jobs outside of an office or traditional, stationary workstation. The frontline workforce includes a massive number of employees and contractors: field service techs, mobile healthcare workers, maintenance and delivery workers, sales reps, consultants, and many more. Nearly three billion strong, mobile workers play an essential role across industries such as healthcare, utilities, education, manufacturing, transportation, construction, and agriculture. 

While the COVID-19 pandemic brought the value of frontline work into stark relief, the demand for these workers hasn’t lessened. In fact, many of the top industries for frontline workers expect to see rapid growth in the near future. Home healthcare, for example, is projected to grow 3x faster than the overall healthcare industry by 2031. 

With increased attention on the importance of frontline workers, and abundant data on the challenges they face in doing their work with efficiency and satisfaction, what’s standing between mobile workers and the tools they need to succeed? Tech enablement.

How a lack of frontline tech enablement hurts your business

With the arrival of personal computing in the 1970s and the internet in the 1990s, desk-based workers not only had abundant access to tech but ample time to embrace it. Companies outfitted their offices with desk-based hardware and adopted CRM, ERP, and HRIS platforms (to name only a few) from big-name SaaS providers.

For decision-makers, it seemed easier to equip and train a centralized, office-based team of workers on new tech than to equip and train frontline workers. Complex regulatory landscapes, especially in some industries,  limited broad-based investment in the mobile worker experience and supporting technologies. 

This led to an imbalance in tech investment, with frontline workforce tech accounting for less than 1% of the estimated $300+ billion invested in employee software.

Deprived of tech that would make them more efficient and satisfied in their careers, the mobile workforce got by with manual, inefficient processes, augmenting them with their own workarounds when needed. Smartphones and tablets became essential tools for frontline workers—and, more recently, so did cloud computing and 5G connectivity. 

At present, a lag in mobile SaaS implementation collides with escalating demand for frontline workers. And mobile workers are understandably frustrated. Retention rates are concerning, and workers report feeling overworked and underappreciated.

It’s time to listen to frontline workers and equip them with the tools they need to deliver optimal service. 

What frontline workers really mean when they say they want “better tech” 

Because technology enablement was office-driven for so long, there’s a profound misconception that frontline workers lack tech literacy—an assumption that discourages investment in their tech needs.

In fact, frontline workers acutely understand how mobile-first SaaS tech could help them: 41% say more tech would make the difference in their success, and 61% say their employers haven’t provided it. Mobile workers are frustrated by existing tools that are slow, inefficient, non-collaborative, and difficult to implement. 

Frontline workers want SaaS with a friendly UI, designed for field use, and flexible enough to adapt to their unique workflows and processes. They want accurate and fast schedules, automated recurring tasks, and real-time status updates with minimal manual effort.

And they don’t just want better tech because it will help them be more efficient. They say better tech is one of the top factors in reducing their job-related stress. When workers handle thousands of customer interactions per day, those better equipped for the job deliver the highest quality customer service.

What better tech can do for your mobile workforce

Mobile workforce management technology can make a timely and sizable impact on five key areas: 

• Communication – 96% of frontline workers want tech that simplifies and improves communication across frontline workers, managers, and office staff. They’re looking for real-time, secure notifications and updates, centralized data collection, and seamless integration with existing CRM, ERP, and HR platforms across the organization.
  
• Task Management – Assigning and tracking job duties is more transparent and efficient with smart scheduling. Desk-based and mobile workers benefit from AI-assisted scheduling based on customizable parameters that fit the specific needs of the business and the service being delivered. In fact, this tech decreases weekly job delays by 67% and increases on-the-job productivity by nearly a third.
  
• Training – 55% of frontline workers reported a lack of training and prep to successfully adopt digital tools. Training and onboarding resources built into MWM software help newer workers ramp up faster, reducing the time between hiring and productivity targets.
  
• Health and Safety Monitoring – With frontline workforce technology, worker safety tools like route optimization, GPS tracking, and mobile-first communication are incorporated into job workflows
  
• Real-Time Troubleshooting – Workers can immediately access equipment specs, product manuals, technical guides, and support from managers and peers from the s

How to give mobile workers the solutions they need 

The digital transformation of the mobile workforce should reflect the holistic effort that offices made to bring desk-based workers online: strategic, systemic tech enablement designed to encourage widespread adoption and build on end-user feedback. 

Involve frontline workers in choosing and implementing tech 

A successful implementation requires understanding the unique needs of a large number of mobile workers. Collect input on what workers want from the tools you’re expecting them to embrace. Identify highly engaged frontline workers and empower them to be evangelists for giving feedback and adopting new systems. During and after implementation, listen to your mobile workforce about how it’s going: in addition to quantitative data on tech adoption, collect qualitative feedback on their usage and ongoing training or support needs.

Create the right views for schedulers and workers

Bring managers and frontline workers into sync by aligning their perspectives. Design customized views to accommodate workflows, permissions, and user experience. These views can also be individualized to a worker’s unique responsibilities: for example, schedulers get a customized view that factors in available workers and resources, while managers see a dashboard of critical field service metrics. 

Use a variety of training techniques 

Treat training as a continuous process, not an isolated event. Educate staff on how the new technology will impact their daily responsibilities, and connect field-based workflows to operational outcomes to improve team alignment. Provide training in settings that match users’ learning styles: hands-on demos, in-person instruction, videos, and other formats to help workers retain and apply key principles.

Review performance data and make improvements 

When it comes to mobile workforce technology, the “set it and forget it” approach is a recipe for disaster. Monitor the implementation process and follow up in areas where adoption is lagging. Monitor KPIs associated with tech usage and identify opportunities for improvement, and review how new tech informs operations management. To keep the big picture in view, compare data before and after implementation to understand what has changed and where there is room for improvement. 

Better tech for better business outcomes

The next question is how you’ll make your investment. Should you build or buy your frontline tech? We break down the pros and cons of building vs. buying mobile workforce management software based on your unique workforce and target market.