Imagine this … A member of your frontline walks into the company lunchroom where there’s a communal bulletin board on the wall next to the fridge. As they reach for their lunch, they notice an 8.5” by 11” sheet of paper thumb-tacked to the board with a message in a large font so that they don’t miss it:
REMINDER:
TEAM MEETING NEXT MONDAY.
ATTENDANCE MANDATORY.
WE HAVE EXCITING NEWS TO SHARE WITH YOU.
Except that they did miss it … when it was relevant. The message is dated over a month ago.
But wait! If one employee missed it, how many others in your organization “didn’t get the memo”?
If this scenario is familiar to you, it’s time to modernize the way your organization communicates, especially with your frontline.
As successful entrepreneur and philanthropist Marcus Lemonis advocates, “fortunately, many business owners, as well as leaders of Fortune 500 companies, understand that their people are their greatest asset.”
Not only that, but a high percentage of frontline workers are considered deskless; they work on their feet and often don’t use a computer or company email address in their day-to-day activities.
So, it only makes sense that organizations deploy a communication strategy that caters to deskless workers as well.
Time to Modernize Deskless Communication
Going back to our example above where we have a staff member realizing that they missed a month-old communication, what do you think their next question would be? How about this, “Exciting news? What news?”
Not to answer a question with another question but where would this frontline worker turn for the answer? HR? Their supervisor? Another frontline worker?
Perhaps. But isn’t it better to get news straight from HQ?
We all know the telephone game, right? One person whispers, “Johnny did the dishes,” who in turn whispers it to the next person and so on until the last person repeats what they heard out loud. Usually it’s something like, “Pony has no lashes.” It sounds similar – rhymes even – but has nothing to do with the original message.
This is a simple example of the importance of having a two-way communication solution. While it’s important to speak TO your frontline, you also need a way for your workforce to respond.
Enter WorkJam, the leader in digital frontline workplace. WorkJam takes multiple aspects of your frontline’s workday activities and seamlessly integrates them into one app that your workforce uses on their personal devices. No computer or company email required, and all in the name of increased compliances, efficiencies, and productivity.
One of those activities is communication, which plays an integral role in not only ensuring that everyone “gets the memo” but also in standardizing corporate processes.
Imagine a world where you can quickly send out a message to your entire organization. Or when required, segment your communication to a targeted few. Perhaps you want to convey a message to a team from one location or to frontline workers with a specific skill. And with a two-way communication solution such as WorkJam, your frontline workers can easily ask questions or respond with feedback.
Another aspect of a strong two-way communication app is surveys and polls. One of the best ways to keep your frontline happy and engaged is by listening. How can you know what’s important to your frontline workers? How do you understand what their goals are? By asking questions. With polls and surveys, you can easily ask a question that your workforce can just-as-easily respond to with a quick press of a button on their personal device.
The ultimate goal of having a two-way communication app is to ensure that your frontline feels valued and heard. Which of course leads to a happy and productive workforce. A happy frontline worker is an engaged worker. We don’t need to tell you that labor shortage is a worldwide problem. And the way to combat that is to keep your frontline workers happy with the right retention strategy, which you can read about here in our blog post titled, “Reduce turnover with the right employee retention plan (you’ll be glad you did!).”
Meanwhile, stay tuned for Part 2 of this series on the importance of having a two-way communication solution for communicating with your frontline.
