How Businesses Need To Manage Deskless Workers In This New Digital Normal

Over the last few years, businesses in order to gain a competitive edge and fast-track digitisation are seen inclining more towards modern workforce management solutions and business models.

Even today, a huge number of the employee base does not sit behind a desk to do their jobs and is working in the same traditional manner without any support of technology or digital capabilities. ( Representative image: Getty )

We have stepped into a challenging phase where everything is changing at a fast pace. Consumer choices, regulatory requirements, market scenarios, labour demographics, demands, and supply chain disruptions are calibrating how organisations manage and communicate with their global workforce. Over the last few years, businesses in order to gain a competitive edge and fast-track digitisation are seen inclining more towards modern workforce management solutions and business models.

This actually implies more with deskless workers and is especially true for employers with large “deskless worker” populations. Even today, a huge number of the employee base does not sit behind a desk to do their jobs and is working in the same traditional manner without any support of technology or digital capabilities. 

When these deskless workers are enabled with digital tools which can support them in managing their work schedules, self-service shift swap, check-in and check-out, receive micro-training, request early clock out, accessibility to key company documents, and receive critical business developments. All this will turn out to be beneficial for them and increase productivity overall. 

According to IDC Technology Spotlight: The Imperative and Value of Intelligence Workforce Management, modern workforce management technology when integrated with employee communications is aiding organisations to remain competitive in the current labour market.
 
Another report by IDC’s FutureScape Report 2022 predicts that by 2023, 70 per cent of connected workers in task-based roles will use intelligence embedded in adaptive digital workspaces to engage clients/colleagues and drive enterprise productivity. Businesses that have implemented new workforce management platforms have constantly seen an increased outcome. Moreover, employee experience has been impacted positively with higher productivity, lower administrative costs, effective staffing, and improved talent retention.
 
We are in times when employee experience is of the utmost priority for organisations, especially post-pandemic, it's crucial to embrace new paradigms, but we must be sure it doesn’t come at the cost of belonging, collaboration, and camaraderie between co-workers. The modern workforce needs to be handled well by serving all their requirement, while parallelly ensuring business protocols and target areas are intact. 

In this new normal, the meaning of workplace has evolved and it is very differently employees see work today. Organisations have started to realise the importance of both employee experience and customer experience and prioritise each equally. In times like these, businesses must respond to the call of the workforce if they are to remain competitive. That is the ultimate case for intelligent workforce management: it saves time, costs, and effort and keeps your teams working together and performing at their best.