If you’re someone whose dining table has become a desk, you’ll know the transition to remote working has not always been easy.
But the wealth of productivity, collaboration and performance apps available on most laptops has made life a lot easier than it could have been.
Imagine if you were trying to get things done without all those digital capabilities at your fingertips.
That’s the reality for 2.7 billion people around the world who work without a desk. And they represent an astonishing 80% of the global workforce.
While deskbound workers are inundated with technology to make their jobs easier, deskless workers have been largely left out of digital transformation. Research suggests that historically only 1% of software funding has been directed towards this vast workforce, which has tended to rely on spreadsheets and paper-driven processes to log everyday activity, often in silos.
Deskless workers fulfil millions of roles in retail, healthcare, hospitality, logistics, agriculture, education, manufacturing and construction. This workforce includes the retail assistants, technicians, nurses and cleaners who have such a big impact on the overall growth, productivity, operational efficiency and quality standards of the organisations they work for. Yet they have been largely neglected from a technological standpoint.
Lacking digital insight
More than 70% of deskless workers want better access to technology that will improve the way they work, according to The Rise of the Deskless Workforce, a study by Emergence Capital.
But it’s not just deskless workers themselves who are left wanting. Their operational leaders are left without the insight they need to respond to changing circumstances, roll out new processes and make better decisions.
Information is disjointed and travels very slowly, making analysis difficult and inhibiting the organisation’s ability to make changes. In a world where shifting conditions demand new levels of vigilance and reinvention, barriers to agility become significant disadvantages.
New technology is pushing the frontier beyond the office and helping workers right where and when the work is happening.
The Rise of the Deskless Workforce
There’s a gap that needs to be bridged. By connecting people, processes and experiences on the frontline, organisations can unlock a more productive future where deskless workers deliver meaningful value consistently.
Intelligent operations
At Checkit we believe that gap can be bridged with an intelligent operations management platform that prompts, guides and logs the frontline activity of deskless workers, whether they are checking hot food stock levels, administering medicines or keeping essential facilities clean.
Live and interactive playbooks are delivered to deskless workers via an app on their mobile device or dedicated handset. These provide employees with instructions on what jobs they need to do, where and when, creating a digital record in the cloud.
Customisable real-time dashboards can be analysed by operational leaders to measure performance against customized KPIs and spot areas of weakness – which can then be addressed by quickly configuring rolling out new guidance, creating a virtuous circle of continuous improvement.
