The staffing crisis is eating into frontline services with record shortages across healthcare, hospitality, food service, retail and logistics.
Deskless workforces are the hardest hit. Job roles that don’t involve working at a desk account for the highest proportion of vacancies.
There are a range of macro trends fuelling the crisis, including Covid disruption, changing demographics, socio-economic shifts and immigration policies. However, these are all factors beyond the control of individual employers.
So what can employers do to attract and retain deskless workers?
This blog looks at five actions for employers to focus on.
Now’s the time to establish better connection with this important section of the working population and meet the needs of deskless employees more proactively.
Read on to find out:
- Which industry sectors are most affected by the staffing crisis?
- What is causing the staffing crisis?
- What can employers do to attract and retain deskless staff?
Which industry sectors are most affected by the staffing crisis?
In the UK, employers are facing their worst ever shortages, according to the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC).
- Almost two-fifths of hospitality venues have had to totally or partially close due to lack of staff.
- The retail sector saw 193,000 vacancies posted in a single week during August.
- Vacancies are rising in the NHS and care homes have seen a 60% rise in staff turnover.
- UK needs around 100,000 extra HGV drivers according to logistics industry estimates.
In the US, vacancies have hit an all-time high with more than 10 million open jobs.
- Hotel group Marriott is facing a “fight for talent” as it tries to recruit 10,000 staff to its US hotels.
- In the retail sector, 94% of firms are having problems filling empty roles.
- In healthcare, 84% of hospital leaders surveyed said they faced ongoing challenges with nursing workforce coverage due to higher turnover and vacancy rates.
- Restaurant groups including McDonald’s, Olive Garden and Chipotle are boosting wages in an attempt to attract new employees.
What is causing the staffing crisis?
A combination of factors has created a perfect storm for employment problems in key sectors, with a particularly acute impact on deskless workers. Many have moved away from these roles in what has been described as the great resignation. The pandemic is a factor in itself but the past 18 months have also brought underlying issues to the surface.
Burnout is driving employees away
Deskless staff who worked extra hard during the pandemic to ensure the provision of essential services, when their teams were decimated by illness, absence, self-isolation and furlough, have been radically rethinking their work-life balance. Many have resigned as a result of burnout. For example, hospitals are facing severe healthcare backlogs which put pressure on staff who are already stretched.
Poor pay and conditions contribute to staffing crisis
Historically low wages, long shifts and unsociable hours across deskless roles are no longer tolerated by large numbers of workers. The pandemic has brought about a large-scale shift in people’s priorities and highlighted issues around childcare provision. It is telling that companies including Target, Best Buy, McDonald’s and Amazon have introduced higher wages and bonuses to attract new employees.
Deskless workers are undervalued
Despite their best efforts to maintain continuity throughout lockdown conditions, many deskless employees have been left with the feeling that they are not valued by their organisations. It’s not only a question of salary but a sense of disconnection from the wider company and a suspicion that their work is taken for granted - exacerbating the staffing crisis.
Safety concerns add to the staffing crisis
Unable to work from home, deskless teams have been called into work continuously through the pandemic, even when infection rates were peaking. Health and safety policy adherence has been stretched to the limit. Applying social distancing measures in dynamic and busy deskless environments brings challenges that many employers struggled to overcome in the short-term.
How do employers attract and retain deskless workers?
The staffing crisis has prompted a healthy discussion on the needs of deskless workers in the modern era. It is incumbent on employers in sectors that depend on deskless workers to give greater consideration to those needs.
Leaders now have an opportunity to implement measures to retain existing workers and attract the new recruits they need to fill vacancies. And it’s not only about stabilising the deskless workforce but empowering these employees to make an even greater contribution to growth, customer experience, productivity and safety.
Avoid staffing crisis by giving deskless staff greater autonomy
Management of deskless workers has traditionally adopted a command-and-control approach. But the widespread disengagement that lies behind the staffing crisis demands a new strategy. Employers must give more autonomy to frontline workers operating far away from company headquarters. An academic study published this year highlighted how giving frontline workers greater control over their time and scheduling could drive up their productivity. One example would be to replace retrospective checklists with a more supportive and adaptable form of guidance. Compliance-driven checklists offer a simple form of scrutiny over the tasks that workers have or have not completed. In contrast, forward-looking organisations are deploying digital assistants to the mobile devices of deskless workers. Digital assistants prompt, guide and capture the activity of employees while giving them greater autonomy over the way in which tasks are done and how they collaborate with colleagues.
Step up the digital experience of deskless workers
According to one survey, 73% of frontline employees are still using pen-and-paper checklists. But depending on paperwork can be dangerous. Elsewhere, actions might be logged in disparate spreadsheets and siloed legacy systems. These are in stark contrast to the digital experiences employees enjoy at home. From smart speakers to on-demand TV streaming and doorstep security, employees know what good technology feels like. Yet when they arrive in deskless jobs they are confronted with working practices that have hardly changed in the past two decades. Given the staffing crisis, the deskless digital experience demands more attention. This is an issue that will become more pressing as a digitally-savvy generation of young people enter the workforce. A more intuitive digital experience is what deskless employees increasingly expect and leaders need to look at ways to make that happen.
Deliver on-the-go training to deskless workers
The process of onboarding and training staff can eat up many hours of valuable time – particularly in sectors with high levels of staff turnover. Some deskless staff, including international recruits without native language skills, may struggle with traditional written documentation. One way employers can address this is to make on-the-job guidance more accessible. Digital assistants, available via mobile devices, deliver step-by-step guidance directly to staff members to help them complete tasks even if they are unfamiliar with an environment and its working practices. Instead of separate training modules, on-the-go learning takes a more practical stance and enables new joiners to get up to speed quickly. One organisation was able to reduce onboarding time to less than a month across its entire workforce by using the Checkit platform.
Recognise the value of frontline work
One of the causes of the staffing crisis is that workers don’t feel their efforts are recognized. This is hardly surprising if their tasks are noted on paper and filed away for monthly or quarterly reporting. By digitising processes, employees can log their achievements immediately, wherever they are working, and their managers get a real-time view of performance levels. This enables leaders to recognise and reward frontline achievements, as well as the data-driven intelligence to direct additional training and support where it is most needed. Defining, capturing and sharing individual contribution to overall performance helps to embed a sense of purpose in everyday work.
Reduce risk of staffing crisis with safer working practices
Employers can ensure safer working conditions and reduce the risk of errors and accidents if they have real-time visibility of what’s happening on the frontline. Outdated paperwork and associated reporting methods are slow, inflexible and prone to errors and falsification. The result is that organisations succumb to ‘dark operations’ – making them blind to risks that they are unable to see. Digital technology enables leaders to provide clear and up-to-the-minute guidance to their deskless workforce. It also creates a valuable feedback loop, with predictive insight that helps to flag up areas of concern at an early stage. Guidance and procedures can be quickly amended or updated and rolled out at pace across an entire organization. The pandemic has increased safety concerns. A survey in January 2021 suggested that 71% of workers did not feel completely safe in their workplace. The survey also suggested only 45 per cent of workplaces had safety protocols in place such as social distancing and mandatory mask wearing. Risk reduction will be crucial for organisations aiming to thrive in the post-pandemic world.
Turning around the staffing crisis in deskless workforces will require employers to rethink the way they equip, empower and engage with frontline teams.
