Hospitality, retail, healthcare – every industry has employee communication challenges
Hotels, retailers, restaurants, bus companies, charities, manufacturers, transport, hospitals – each company in each industry must address its own set of challenges. The most challenging of these is that most employees will either be deskless or away from a large screen for much of the day. This is not only tricky from a communications perspective, but also in terms of reaching them with an employee survey, improving the operational tools they use, or even keeping on top of shadow technology.
An employee mobile app product could help solve some of the challenges across your business. As, when you look hard at the problems faced by different industries, there are many that have threads of commonality. An employee mobile app product can tackle these challenges head-on, here are just five examples to explain how.
Easily share news
Short and sweet, or long and detailed – there are different styles across different app products. It’s not all about writing of course, so your CEO could share a business update through a live video for instance. Sharing news directly to phone apps is more reliable than email or physical communications, especially if you invite people to react or respond to the news. There are often features to force users to acknowledge when they have read something, which is then reportable. A feature not only useful for important news, but also compliance documents.
Consolidate processes into one app
Electronic forms are a common part of employee app products, are easy to complete on mobile, and can feed into larger systems. So, a catering assistant or builder could complete a near-miss form on their app, which then passes into a Health & Safety system. Apps can also act as a central place for other systems, so Quinyx shift data or Workday holiday requests could be accessed, and actioned, from within just one tool.
‘Do not disturb: surgery hours open’
It’s important for employees to be able to ignore communications and digital tools for safety and privacy reasons; where an employee is working with a member of the public, such as a nurse, or where they’re using heavy machinery, such as a bus driver, builder, forklift driver, and many more. Lots of apps allow for ‘do not disturb’ periods to be set and for notifications to be switched off. The colleague can dip in and out when it suits them, and notifications and news will all be there waiting for them when it’s convenient.
Bite-sized e-learning
Many employee apps offer simple in-built approaches to training. This could cover formal training of new topics such as merchandising standards, sharing compliance-based updates such as a product recall, or developing soft skills and engagement such as how to deliver excellent customer service. Some apps can feed into a learning management system or can be kept completely separate and save on the cost of another business tool.
Make your budgets work
Every penny counts, but you don’t need to spend a fortune if you choose an app product. There’s no need for expensive Microsoft 365 licences for everyone, as can be needed for larger systems like intranets. Of course, some app solutions are more expensive, but there are some very good products at very appealing price points.
How to find out more
Whatever your industry or sector, reaching, supporting, and engaging distributed teams and frontline workers will likely be a key concern. Our employee apps report covers all the above situations, and more, to help make sense of a complex market and the associated features. There are 22 reviews in total for you to read through and consider. It will save you weeks of research time and give you confidence you’re introducing the right tool. So, make a small investment now to create a big improvement for your frontline workers.
