Five Internal Communication Assumptions Holding Back Deskless Teams

Organisations often struggle to engage deskless employees because communication strategies are built around assumptions rather than frontline realities. Common issues include poor content relevance, fragmented technology, low trust in information, weak adoption planning and ineffective feedback mechanisms.

Despite many different organisational structures, technology implementations and strategies, the challenges on the frontline are often surprisingly similar:

1. We assume people know where to find things

2. We assume messages have landed because they've been sent

3. We assume everyone experiences work in the same way.

Most of the time, those assumptions aren't made because people don't care. They're made because it's really difficult to see the day-to-day reality when you're not living it yourself.

These challenges are particularly common in housing associations, hospitality businesses, healthcare, logistics operations, charities and retail organisations where large proportions of employees work away from desks.

This blog post discusses whether we’re designing work around realities or based on assumptions and includes customer illustrations.  It describes how the digital workplace reality - communication, technology, adoption and employee experience - is different from the strategy we build.

Assumption 1: If we've sent the message, we've communicated

Big tick, we’ve built the shiny newsletter, delivered the Town Hall event, written an email to managers for cascading to teams.

The Reality 

The newsletter isn’t read.  Shift workers and desk-less workers didn't attend the town hall.  Emails were lost in the noise.

Customer Illustration

A leisure company operating 250+ sites and 16,000 employees, mainly in deskless roles.  

The big challenge for this organisation is how to make things simple but personalised for employees.

The project focused purely on employees only seeing content that is useful to them.  This is delivered through channels: global, regional, functional and site based.

Customer Solution

• Prioritise ruthlessly: send to those who need it, rather than a blanket send to all

• Design around needs: not everybody should have the same experience

• Relevance beats reach: every time

• Context beats cascade: enable managers to use their own channels to communicate in a  way that makes sense for their team

• Measure understanding, the action, the behaviour change, rather than opens and clicks.

Assumption 2: If we provide the tools, people will use them

We’ve given them the tools, we’ve invested in platforms, we’ve integrated, we have systems and processes, everybody has what they need.

The Reality 

They can’t access the platform, there’s too many applications, nobody knows where to go, it’s quicker to ask somebody via a private message.

Customer Illustration & Solution

A large logistics company, with people offline during their working day, and limited access to a mobile.

• Create one front door: a structured access to one sign in which opens all applications

• Reduce the clicks: every click is a potential lost engagement. Simplify the employee journey

• Design around real life: experience the deskless and frontline world and make engagement intuitive

• Remove the friction: integrate everything and make it simple to improve employee experience.

Assumption 3: If information exists, employees can find it

They can find it.  It’s on Sharepoint!  And our intranet.

The Reality

Multiple versions of the document are suggested by the search results.  Access is difficult, particularly if the document is on Sharepoint.  People trust the response from an individual more than the results on the intranet or Sharepoint.

Customer Illustration

A large retail charity with a huge Sharepoint estate.

What started out as a simple project, to migrate from classic Sharepoint to modern Sharepoint, uncovered a huge trust issue; employees didn’t trust that what they were finding was correct.

Customer Solution

• Trust beats volume: ensure information is accurate and timely by deleting old files

• Remove the clutter and the added bonus - less storage means less cost

• Governance is crucial for permissions and roles based access, who owns it, who updates, how is it being maintained

• Do the hard hours to make search work: AI can’t create clarity.  If content is unclear, fragmented, or outdated, AI will amplify those issues.

Assumption 4: If we launch the platform, adoption will follow

We launched the platform! 

“I have built it, they will come” is wishful thinking. 

The Reality

Desk-less teams don’t wake up wanting to login to the comms platform, they wake up wanting to do their jobs.  Making working lives better is fundamental: find the value first, drive the adoption and engagement will follow.

Customer Illustration

A company with 80% deskless workforce researched their platform through user groups, focus groups and engagement chats.  They  discovered the key interests for teams were payslips, booking leave, organising shifts and colleague recognition.

Customer Solution

• Utility drives adoption: understand use cases, focus on what the deskless employee wants. Useful functionality will drive desired behaviour

• Build habits not hype: think about the long term, not only a big bang launch

• Empower local champions: general managers have influence & can make or break

• Peer influence often drives more engagement than corporate activity

• Focus on everyday value: deliver the things that people want.

Assumption 5: If we ask for feedback, we're listening

We’re listening.  Of course employee engagement teams are trying, asking for feedback, doing annual surveys.  Be comfortable with the uncomfortable, feedback needs action.

The Reality

The people you most want to hear from are not the ones completing your survey.  Deskless workers are the frustrated disillusioned ones who don’t feel they’re listened to.

Customer Illustration

An organisation spread across thousands of miles - remote, dealing with the public, away from desks - delivered the most trusting feedback culture by allowing conversations to happen, uncomfortable ones in public on the platform, at any time.

Customer Solution

• Listen continuously, not just through an annual survey. Leaders need to engage, hear the pulse changes, check in regularly

• Design with, not for: spend a day with desk-less teams to uncover how they function

• Validate assumptions: talk to those who don’t want to talk. Build trust by giving employees confidence that they have a voice

• Stay close to reality: every employee has a different reality to yours.

Closing the Gap Between Strategy and Reality

Probably our biggest learning is that the best projects always start in the same place: understanding how work actually happens before deciding how to improve it.

Sometimes that leads to new technology. Sometimes it means simplifying what's already there. Often it's a bit of both.

But the organisations that get the best results have one thing in common. They spend less time asking, "What platform do we need?" and more time asking, "What problem are we actually trying to solve for our people?"

It sounds simple, but it's surprisingly easy to get those the wrong way round.

Key Takeaways

Winning with deskless and frontline employees requires:

1. Design workplace experiences around real employee behaviours

2. Relevance matters more than reach

3. Utility drives platform adoption

4. Trust is essential for effective communications management

5. Employee listening should be continuous, not annual.

FAQ

What is a deskless workforce? A deskless, or frontline, workforce includes employees who spend most of their working day away from a desk, such as retail, logistics, housing, hospitality and healthcare teams.

Why do internal communications often fail for deskless workers? Messages are often distributed through channels that deskless employees rarely access, creating gaps in awareness, understanding and engagement.

How can organisations improve communication with frontline teams? By delivering relevant content, simplifying access to information, reducing technology friction and creating continuous feedback opportunities.

Why do employees ignore communication platforms? Employees adopt platforms when they solve everyday problems such as accessing payslips, booking leave, managing shifts or finding trusted information.