Corporate + frontline = a connected culture that builds value

Renee Griffin

The global workforce is becoming increasingly deskless. The latest statistics show that roughly 80 percent of the global workforce don’t see offices or work at desks. That’s 2.7 billion people who are geographically dispersed, mobile, multi-generational, and mostly paid hourly instead of salaried. 

And there’s a big problem: two out of three deskless workers who responded to a recent Gallup survey indicated they feel disengaged and disconnected from their jobs. 

That’s a lot of frontline potential going to waste despite the billions of dollars organizations are spending every year on benefits, recruitment, retention, and expensive IT tools. Connection, the glue that binds organizations together, isn’t sticking.  

“Connected organizations not only encourage collaborative teamwork but make it integral to the organizational design and structure with seamlessly integrated systems and tools that foster collaboration,” says Abby Guthkelch of Workplace from Facebook. “As a result, the business feels like a community no matter where you work.” 

Connecting the frontline

Working as a team, an organization’s point persons from communications, HR, and IT can deploy an enterprise tool/platform technology such as Connecteam, theEmployeeApp, Workplace from Facebook to connect deskless employees to the business, its values, and each other for a strong community culture. Access controls can be part of the rollout, too, with a communication plan that provides clear guidance for hourly workers to limit their use of the tool/platform to their non-work times such as lunch hours and coffee breaks.

Openness and transparency

Employees can be an organization’s best advocates if they’re well informed and feel connected to their workplace. Make it a priority to share news/info internally first before going external. 

Leaders showing employees that they’re part of the community reinforces understanding that the organization trusts, respects and treats employees like adults. For example, if a leader is scheduled for an external media interview, have him/her record an ad-hoc message on his iphone or ipad first for the comms team to distribute internally as a heads-up to employees.

Consider leveraging the enterprise technology to provide a live, company-wide weekly Q&A session that gives employees real-time access to leadership with the ability to ask questions and make comments/suggestions. Focus on fostering dialogue to improve communication between leadership and staff. Some workers may want to make anonymous submissions, which can be collected in advance to help remove fears or embarrassments.

Be prudent with the optics of how leadership shows up on internal channels. For example, if deskless workers on offshore oil rigs and at rural field operation sites aren’t tuning in for Q&As and virtual town halls livestreamed from the corporate HQ, consider using backdrops that are representative of their work environments. Optical relevance may increase viewership.

People first

Mobile and wireless are pervasive, so you have to make sure comms stack up in terms of content to command attention and drive desired attitudes and behaviors. 

Studies show 70% of us are on-the-go content viewers while 30% engage in captivated viewing (consuming multiple pieces of content in one sitting).

This means you’ve got to beat the scroll by causing visual disruption. 

Brains process images more quickly that words, so lean more on graphic visuals, emojis, videos, and formatted copy to deliver messages rather than a wall of text. The aim is to be different, unique, entertaining, innovative and draw people in, call them to action, and drive awareness and behavior.  

Consider recruiting employee champions in comms campaigns. Some of them may be game to use #hastags, share selfies, give shout-outs, produce rap videos, do dance-offs to help you convey the message.

Getting executive buy-in

Tell the C-suite team that it’s about more than communication. Employees and stakeholders are looking for leaders to be active, engaged, transparent –internally and externally. Research studies and data show leadership visibility and engagement actually leads to talent attraction and talent retention. 

Plot out a ladder or arc to a specific business objective that a leader is keen to move the dialogue on. 

Within the 5-point or 10-point strategic plans of most organizations, there’s always one objective that leaders would be incredibly happy to deliver. Find out what it is and build a plan for leaders to communicate topics that align with the objective to the community.

They can go personal (e.g. insight into who they are, their passions, interests, career advice from their past), share their area of focus (e.g. their specific role in the business, what projects they own), or give industry insights (e.g. their takeaways from external conferences, outside meetings they’ve recently attended). All these will help them realize the value of turning up on internal channels, see their role in the community, and achieve the business objective(s) important to them.

Take a measured approach to making requests to leaders, being mindful of how they show up. Overexposure and underexposure are equally bad on community channels, so be clear to them about having very set roles.


(Reference: “Deskless Not Voiceless: How to connect your frontline with corporate,” IABC webinar presented by Abby Guthkelch, January 2020.)

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