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Does your organization have an annual employee engagement survey and then nothing else to gather feedback from your people?

No Pulse Surveys?

No communication channel where employees can provide their feedback whenever they feel like it?

Well, how then could your organization accurately capture those 9-month warning signs?

Take a guess how many percent of the global workforce do not have a desk?
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60 to 80% of workers globally - about 2.7 billion people - are “deskless” and handling jobs that do not require (or allow for) sitting in place.
 
If that number surprises you, think about all the industries this includes retail and grocery, healthcare, hospitality and foodservice, construction, manufacturing, logistics and utilities.
 
These frontline workers have unique job demands, volatile working schedules, demanding customers, long hours standing and little to no access to task-critical information.
 
In 2021 this deskless workforce will undergo an Employee Experience investment renaissance as companies are increasingly recognizing the impact technology has on boosting deskless worker productivity and job satisfaction.
 

I hope you catch my idea.

Let me ask you a few questions to reflect upon. 

What is one of the last competitive edges any business could sharpen?

Your product?

Anyone can copy your product in shorter and shorter periods of time.

I reckon all businesses out there are driven to achieve higher business results.

Here business results mean anything your organization wants to achieve.

This could be purpose-driven or profit-driven.

We are in the midst of The Great Reshuffle with many people changing jobs within the frontline industries.

As more digital tools enter the workplace, organizations should pay particular attention to the actual, not promised, productivity within their workforce. According to PwC’s Global Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey 2022,  one of the biggest challenges they identified is the need to improve what is often called the “employee experience.”

Studies have shown that the majority of all staff turnover happens within the first year. Highly engaged employees, however, resign less frequently than disengaged employees.

In your mind, when is an employee’s engagement level at the highest?

On the day an employee signs the offer letter their employee engagement is presumably at a peak.

Why would any organization want to let it drop by missing the opportunity to keep that momentum up?

Companies are quite adept at managing how they communicate their messages outside the company and towards their target customers.  They have entire departments and teams of experts that strategize an external communications strategy and implement this through a well-thought-out communications plan.

But what about internal communications? This is the act of conceptualizing and implementing a communications strategy targeted towards your own employees. This often does not receive the same attention and focus that external communications receives.

But why is this the case?

Isn't the overall goal of Internal Communication to turn strategy into action?

Whenever I ask organizations how they communicate with and get their message across to their entire workforce - including their non-desk workforce that performs their work on-the-go - I often hear, “Oh, internal communication with our mobile workforce? We have it covered. Everyone is on WhatsApp.”

This makes me very concerned and uneasy. 

Have you ever asked yourself the question, "What could be so wrong with using a consumer tool for internal corporate communications?"

2021 was the year of resilient operations management.