How can deskless workers be integrated into internal communications?

The Covid-19 crisis, confinements and the advent of large-scale telecommuting have highlighted dysfunctions and accentuated misalignments between professions and teams: managers and executives based at head office (white collars), managers in the field (frontline manager) and finally staff in the field (frontline workers, deskless people, blue collars, emailless people...).

A gap was also observed in the tools used: e-mails for 90% of head office leaders versus 27% for frontline managers, who use Whatsapps messages or calls.

Many companies are therefore faced with the challenge of aligning their different groups of employees who prefer radically different communication technologies and software.

Cyril de Queral (CQ), CEO of Powell Software and David Keribin (DK), CEO of Cenareo share their views on the major trends emerging around the subject of inclusion in business tools and communication.

"The major risk for companies with these new ways of working is to lose the contact with employees, to lose its culture." Cyril de Queral 

What are the major changes taking place in companies today?

CQ: The revolution in the world of work that is currently underway is immense, and fascinating to observe. This transformation will go down in the history books! We had already experimented with more telecommuting before the Covid-19 crisis during the transport strikes or the yellow vest crisis. In many countries, notably the US, remote work was already widespread before the pandemic.

But since the pandemic, it's been a tidal wave, with a majority of companies in the service sector offering their employees a very significant proportion of teleworking. Stellantis, one of France's largest industrial companies, offers its employees several days' teleworking. After several months of intensive telecommuting, we can see that hybrid working is the ideal solution.

DK: The culmination of this transformation must be to avoid widening the gap between white and blue collars, and to unite all employees, even those who are not digital natives.

How inclusive are these populations today?

DK: During a discussion with a member of the Bouygues Comex, he confided in me that the only 2 ways of keeping employees informed on construction sites are through managers and the screens we put in the site huts. Yet a recent Lecko study shows that 52% of frontline managers say they miss important information from head office... Imagine the volume of information from head office that never reaches the ears and eyes of frontline workers...

The people who suffer from this digital divide are key to the company...

DK: They are essential to the success of our objectives! Take, for example, Renault CEO Luca De Meo, who presented his strategic plan for the next 5 years last January. What stands out above all are 3 key metrics around profitability, free cash flow and operating margin. They will undoubtedly have an impact on engineering work, but will also undeniably be lived in the factories. If these objectives are not embodied by employees on a daily basis, they cannot be achieved.

It goes without saying that the daily alignment of all stakeholders to these 3 figures alone is necessary.

The challenge is alignment. How can we ensure that the digital wave reaches these least connected populations?

CQ: Indeed, the challenge is to get all employees on board, not just those who are comfortable with digital tools, not just those who are behind a computer, but also those who are out in the field.

Many companies are faced with the challenge of aligning their different employee groups, who prefer radically different communication technologies and software. Strategic digital transformation choices will therefore have a direct impact on the employee experience. If the company ensures that all information is accessible and reaches all employee targets, wherever they may be, then it's a win-win situation. Our role is to propose solutions to include everyone in the company, not just the executives at head office....

What tools are best suited to including the least connected populations in this new organization?

CQ: The major risk for companies with these new ways of working is to lose contact with their employees, to lose their corporate culture. The solution is to set up a communication and employee experience platform where communication and the sharing of corporate culture are given their rightful place, with innovative functionalities.

The digital workplace is becoming indispensable, transforming itself into the company's virtual office. It's the new place to meet and communicate from a distance. This collaboration and communication platform is essential for ensuring employee commitment, good communication, maintaining links and developing corporate culture.

DK: In this context, communication screens within companies are one of the key success factors of this digital transformation. Indeed, these screens don't discriminate, they reach everyone who passes by them, which means 65% more impact than paper, but they are also, and above all, a magnificent tool for connecting teams to the information that passes through internal intranet or employee advocacy tools. By connecting these tools to the screens, the screens become a Drive-to-Web channel that will encourage employees to participate in digital workplaces.

How do you help companies connect Powell's field workers?

CQ: We have an extremely clear and simple way of meeting this need: the most widely used digital tool today is the smartphone. 70% of the world's population has a cell phone, over 5 billion people. So we offer mobile access to the company's digital workplace. We engage front-line workers on a dedicated, easy-to-use mobile application. The agility of these employees on smartphones means they are perfectly at ease with our application, and are included in the company's future work.

How do you avoid drowning employees in a myriad of information and tools?

CQ: This is another of the major difficulties for companies that we at Powell Software aim to solve with our software platform. We believe in using Artificial Intelligence and the power of search engines to present employees with relevant, contextualized information. The applications that employees access first must be the ones they use the most. The dashboard digital workplace must be contextualized for each user. This ensures optimum productivity and targeted access to information wherever the employee works.

DK: The secret is to select information with high added value and repeat the message! Repetition is something well known to marketing managers the world over, but in the corporate world we sometimes tend to forget it. We can't just hope that our messages will have an impact on employees, we have to work to find ways of making it happen. The interconnectivity of corporate tools is key, whether they be work tools (digital workplace) or information tools (digital signage), their interconnectivity is the key to automation and therefore to repetition to maximize impact.