Globally, 80% (2.7 billion) of the workforce is “deskless” – meaning their work happens beyond the boundaries of a desk or office environment. Across the retail, restaurant, and hospitality industries, this population amounts to 613 million workers, with a significant portion being frontline workers.
Most often, a core responsibility of deskless workers is interfacing with customers or products. And demands on their time continue to increase, especially as retailers and restaurants expect in-store foot traffic to increase this year. In fact, predictions indicate that foot traffic in prime retail areas will match pre-pandemic levels in the third quarter of 2024 and surpass them in 2025.
To keep pace with consumer demand, many companies have introduced new technologies to support frontline worker productivity across retail, restaurants, and hospitality. Throughout their days, deskless workers switch back and forth between in-person customer conversations and disparate applications that house critical job functions like training, scheduling, and task management. While most applications only support one or two functions, each is critical to their – and the business’s – ultimate success.
Data suggests all types of workers use 6 or more enterprise applications per day, a sharp increase since 2018. On average, workers waste 62 days a year (doubled since 2018) just navigating enterprise applications, taking valuable time away from higher-impact activities.
What’s at Stake for Retailers
The time deskless workers spend finding the right application for the right task could be better spent driving sales or connecting with customers.
With foot traffic on the rise, in-person consumer interactions are becoming more crucial than ever. According to survey data from a global footwear and apparel brand, while many customers do their shopping online, they still prefer visiting stores in person to get advice from associates about product styles or fit before making a purchase decision. On the flip side, when a consumer’s in-store service expectations go unmet, they often leave in frustration.
Each in-person interaction is an opportunity for workers to build trust on behalf of the brand they represent. Whatever the industry, workers’ time and productivity are critical to an organization’s success and profitability. In a competitive and expensive labor market with rising frontline wages, businesses need a simpler way to empower teams to manage back-of-house tasks and training while providing exceptional customer experiences.
An App Designed for Deskless Workers
Point B's research indicates that over 90% of frontline workers agree that technology helps them fulfill day-to-day job requirements. Still, most systems and applications aren’t intuitive or easy to use. Often, frontline workers aren’t as prepared to use systems as they’d like and find workplace technology disruptive to consumer interactions.
Store employees — and even warehouse and distribution center workers who fulfill customer demands on the backend — need to reduce time spent on administrative responsibilities to unlock additional capacity.
To deliver technologies through a more user-centric, persona-driven experience, many businesses work with organizations like Point B. Their team of consumer & retail and technology experts have successfully helped hundreds of thousands of frontline workers drive impact beyond the boundaries of traditional tooling.
Their deskless worker app offers an intuitive, self-guided digital hub designed and built to streamline access and support employee needs. Leveraging clients’ existing tech investments, Point B and their partners develop custom experiences for employee users. Cloud-enabled enterprise system APIs, AI, and low-code platforms have unlocked the ability to build integrated apps quickly and efficiently, providing increased value. When separate training, task management, scheduling, and HR systems are brought together, workers can manage their days without the cost of context switching between customers and multiple applications.
With everything they need in one place and designed for use on the job, frontline workers can easily stream on demand training, access transparent pay and benefits information, and flexibly schedule and swap shifts. In addition to delighting employees in a challenging labor market, businesses reap the bottom-line rewards of frontline workers regaining time and freedom to deliver better, more dynamic customer experiences.
Employees crave a seamless transition from complex, fragmented systems to a single, intuitive application that empowers them to learn and manage their schedules effortlessly. Organizations investing in deskless worker applications like Point B’s see their employees shift energy and focus to what matters most — their customers.
To see the app in action or access other insights, click here.
