Most workers across the US spend their days beyond the boundaries of a desk or office environment.
In fact, across retail, restaurant, and hospitality industries, 2.7 billion workers — about 80% of the total workforce — is “deskless.” Of those, a significant portion are frontline workers. Their time is often spent working face-to-face with customers, handling products, or doing both simultaneously at retail or restaurant locations.
Time demands on deskless workers have only risen in recent years, especially as retailers anticipate increased in-store foot traffic this year. Predictions indicate that foot traffic in prime areas will match pre-pandemic levels in the third quarter of 2024 and surpass them in 2025. Time and resource-strapped employees will already be looking for creative ways to do more with less.
The Evolution of Deskless Worker Tech
Companies have continued to invest in new employee-facing technologies to support frontline worker productivity and keep pace with consumer demands. Enterprise apps are used for everything from tracking services and sales to managing inventory and delivering training.
But these applications are only as helpful as they are easily accessible.
Average companies expect workers to use 6 or more enterprise applications daily. Often housed in disparate locations, workers struggle to find the right app for the right task during their day. Many of these applications are only useful for 1 or 2 functions, but each is critical to deskless workers’ — and the business’s — ultimate success.
Point B surveyed 120 frontline supervisors and workers in the retail and restaurant industries to gather insights about frontline workers and their experiences using workplace technology.
Unlocking Frontline Potential Report
Findings showed a clear trend:
60%
say tech systems are inaccessible
64%
say applications are incompatible
54%
say the tech is not easy to use
All types of workers waste 62 days a year navigating between the numerous enterprise applications they need to perform in their roles. Incompatibility and lack of accessibility are causing workers to lose valuable time that could be used to meet growing demands in other areas of your business.
What Your Customers (and Employees) Want
Deskless workers’ efficiency and productivity are critical to your organization’s success.
Whether in a retail, restaurant, grocery, or warehouse setting, deskless workers’ time spent on finding the right application for the right task could be spent on other high-value activities.
After all administrative and back-of-house work is completed, research tells us that frontline team members spend roughly 25% of their time on the most important part of their role: Working with customers. Despite the uptick in consumer demand for seamless digital experiences, that time is still critical to customers who continue to voice their desire for more in-person interactions.
According to shopper survey data from a global apparel and footwear company, while many customers do their shopping research online, they still prefer visiting a store and welcome advice from associates on different styles or fits before making their purchase decision. Conversely, consumers with un-met in-store service expectations often leave storefront locations in frustration.
Every in-person interaction with a consumer is an important opportunity for workers to build trust on behalf of the brand they represent. With every experience, data from Point B’s frontline worker survey showed that employees care deeply about the service quality they’re delivering.
In a competitive labor market with rising wages, the bottom-line value of frontline workers’ time will only continue to increase. Businesses need a more straightforward way to house and manage the applications their employees depend on to deliver exceptional customer experiences.
Point B’s App Designed for Deskless Workers
Technology itself has never been the enemy. Point B's research indicates that over 90% of frontline workers agree that technology helps them fulfill day-to-day job requirements. But where the broader employee digital employee experience is found lacking, the benefits of individual tools cannot be fully realized.
Deskless workers across industries – whether they’re working face-to-face with customers or fulfilling product demands on the backend — need a way to reduce time spent on administrative responsibilities to unlock their capacity for higher-impact activities.
Point B’s Deskless Worker App is enabling businesses to unlock that capacity by delivering connected access to business-critical technologies with a more user-centric, persona-driven experience. Our team of consumer & retail and technology experts have successfully helped hundreds of thousands of frontline workers, driving impact beyond the boundaries of traditional tooling. This self-guided, digital hub was designed and built to streamline access and support employee needs.
Leveraging clients’ existing tech investments, Point B and their partners develop custom experiences for employee users. Cloud-enabled enterprise system APIs, AI, and low-code platforms have unlocked the ability to build integrated apps quickly and efficiently, providing increased value. Aware of the gap between investment in enterprise applications and the many issues that can arise in getting that technology across the last mile and into the hands of employees, our experts designed this app with deskless users in mind. Once separate identity and access management, training, task management, scheduling, and HR systems are brought together, allowing workers to manage tasks without the cost of context switching between disparate applications.
With everything they need all in one place, frontline workers can easily stream training on demand, access transparent pay and benefits information, and flexibly schedule and swap shifts. In addition to delighting employees in an ever-challenging labor market, businesses reap the bottom-line rewards of frontline workers regaining their time and freedom to deliver better, more dynamic customer experiences.
Employees are ready to leave disparate, difficult-to-access systems behind and adopt a single, intuitive application that allows them to learn and manage their work schedule with the simplicity and familiarity of their favorite social media or online shopping platforms. You can unlock effectiveness and productivity across your workforce and become an employer of choice by streamlining the digital experiences of deskless workers, allowing them to shift that regained focus back to serving your customers.
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