How Mobile Workforce Management Can Support Frontline Workers
Frontline workers are an essential cog in many organizations, as their contributions in the field directly affect patient and customer satisfaction. But because these employees complete services outside of the office, it’s crucial to keep frontline workers engaged through motivation and support. This means providing the proper tools for success in the field.
What are frontline workers?
Frontline workers, also referred to as deskless workers, are employees or contractors who spend the majority of their days working in the field rather than in an office setting. For example, this includes healthcare clinicians, support workers, occupational therapists, nurses, and any other workers who directly provide services to patients, wherever they may be needed. They’re truly the bedrock of organizations that rely on customer service and delivery for success.
Frontline management, then, should be considered mission-critical, especially as organizations look to both support employees and continue to provide excellent service during critical times, such as a global pandemic. Frontline management includes utilizing a strategy for motivating and empowering frontline workers.
The need for such a strategy has certainly been magnified by the COVID-19 crisis, highlighting the heroic, tireless efforts of frontline workers. Supporting frontline workers should be at the forefront of management priorities moving forward, as well.
Best practices for supporting frontline workers
Supporting your frontline workers doesn’t have to be a shot in the dark. Whether you’re just now developing a strategy for motivating deskless workers or are taking your strategy back to the drawing board as a result of the ‘new normal’ from the Coronavirus, there are some tried-and-true best practices you can follow for success.
Enable communication
Because frontline workers aren’t consistently part of the office environment, they’re not able to access information in the same way as fixed-location employees. They rely on receiving information about mobile work, customers, company news, and more digitally. If they aren’t able to easily send and receive communications between team members, managers, or patients, details will likely fall through the cracks. It’s imperative that organizations enable seamless, accessible communication for frontline workers to keep them motivated and successful.
Improve your scheduling process
A huge part of managing frontline workers is ensuring that you’ve scheduled the right worker at the right time for the right job. Scheduling errors or manual processes could mean dropping the ball on appointments, over-scheduling employees, or sending a worker unprepared to a job. By improving your scheduling process, you’ll ensure that the right worker properly delivers services every time, based on availability and requirements.
Utilize the proper tools
Frontline workers deliver services in a variety of locations, so they require a distinct set of tools. Because they’re often on the go, they need quick, seamless access to those technologies. Assuming that your frontline workers should (or even can) make do with the same technology given to fixed-location employees is a common misstep that should be avoided. Providing intuitive tools for frontline workers that centralize communication, scheduling, and field data can yield better support for workers and alleviate the challenges of day-to-day management.
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Engage with deskless workers and customers
Engaging with customers through SMS messages to alert them of your arrival (or even delays) is a simple but powerful way to ensure great service. Just as important is providing engagement through real-time communication with your frontline workers, who need to remain up-to-date with their appointment times, cancellations, and travel routes. A mobile workforce management app can automatically notify workers through responsive, dynamic updates.
Optimize routing to job locations
Frontline workers are frequently faced with delivering services in areas with which they may be unfamiliar. This can be particularly stressful when a mobile worker has back-to-back jobs that require traveling from one location to the next as quickly as possible. A powerful mobile workforce management solution will optimize routes within a centralized app, engaging your frontline workers even further.
Obtain contactless customer sign-off at delivery completion
Service delivery is, of course, an essential part of a frontline worker’s day to day. So is obtaining customer sign-off at job completion, which increases productivity and reduces the inefficiencies often caused by having to wrap up details after returning from the field. A deskless productivity cloud that allows mobile workers to acquire sign-off without contact means instantly (and safely) capturing important details that may have otherwise been overlooked.
Maintain employee and patient information
Part of delivering excellent service is having the ability to update and maintain information—both from your patients and your frontline employees. If, for instance, a home healthcare provider visits a patient who has developed a drug allergy, that vital piece of information should be tracked. With a mobile workforce management platform, the mobile worker can instantly capture such patient details, which results in an even better, more tailored service during the next interaction. The benefit of tracking personal information extends to the worker, too, as a deskless productivity cloud can store details about certifications, skill sets, and availability for better scheduling.
Access tools from one powerful platform
The ability to schedule, store information, and communicate is absolutely imperative for frontline workers. But in order to successfully empower frontline employees while also improving productivity, you’ll need a powerful platform that can do all that (and more) in one succinct place. Mobile workers who feel engaged are armed with the proper tools to complete their jobs effectively and efficiently. A mobile workforce management system provides deskless workers with access to those tools in one intuitive, seamless place. Add in the ability to automate schedules, optimize routes, easily obtain sign-off, and track time and location—and the capability to do it all offline—and you’ll set your frontline workers up for success.
Support your frontline staff with mobile workforce management
Skedulo’s mobile workforce management platform helps managers empower their frontline workforce with up-to-date scheduling, optimized routes, seamless communication, and location tracking. Whether your frontline workers are on or offline, they’ll have the tools they need to provide excellent service to patients who need it most.
To learn more about how Skedulo can provide the tools that empower your frontline team, book a demo today.
