Eight Practical Ways to Reduce Workplace Friction for Deskless and Frontline Employees
- Nick Crawford
- 1 day ago
- 5 min read
Why reducing workplace friction matters
Frontline and deskless employees keep organisations running, yet many still work with disconnected systems, scattered information and communication that isn't designed around the reality of their day.
During our recent People First, Friction Last webinar, leaders from HR, Internal Communications and digital workplace teams shared the challenges they face.
Although every organisation is different, the same themes keep emerging: successful organisations don’t simply communicate more; they make work easier by communicating better.
They remove unnecessary friction, giving employees faster access to trusted information, reducing reliance on unofficial tools and creating digital workplaces that genuinely support people in their daily work.
Key Takeaways
Reduce workplace friction before adding new technology
Give employees one trusted place for information
Avoid shadow IT by providing better alternatives
Design around frontline realities
Start implementation with real employee pain points
Keep workplace technology human.
Here are eight of the biggest lessons from the conversation.
Creating one culture with dispersed and deskless teams
There’s usually a one culture aspiration from the boardroom but creating this is a team task for HR, Comms, Operations and Tech leaders.
‘One Team’ starts when everyone hears the same voice, the same information and feels equally included in the business. To achieve this across multiple roles, schedules, languages, backgrounds and working environments is no mean feat and involves more than impactful communications alone.
The combination of technology, hr, operations and comms is critical to create a positive culture that’s not impacted by location or distance. Ensuring everyone feels part of something bigger, whether office based or desk-less, in large or small organisations, is a worthy goal.
Using unofficial tools creates a shadow IT dynamic
A big and frequent workplace friction is the use of tools without boundaries. It’s inevitable that if you don't provide employees with a proper communication home, they will build their own.
Employee chats on WhatsApp enhance colleague connection and camaraderie but there is significant data, security and governance risk.
IT lose control over access ownership and consistency
HR can’t manage departing personnel causing accidental information sharing
HR can’t ensure employee privacy, data protection and safety standards
Comms can’t protect sensitive business information which risks being shared externally.
A well governed platform with appropriate channels for employee engagement helps prevent the use of unofficial messages.
Communicating cost effectively
Times have changed and regular in-person company briefings are less appropriate, with the associated travel, time and delivery costs. Streamlining information to reach teams daily and cost efficiently is required, without the added cost of face to face briefings or meet ups outside the working day.
Crucially, these comms need to respect the individual voice and incorporate ways to hear thoughts, ideas and concerns across multiple people and locations.
Mental health matters
Mental health and welfare is ever more important. The tools used within a business must respect boundaries and personal well-being. Laser focus can be applied to give people a trusted space for work, where they can engage on shift and switch off at the end of their working day.
This is highly important for desk-less and frontline workers who may use their personal phone to access work platforms. It also reinforces the unofficial tool challenge: who can ignore a WhatsApp message, even if they’re at home trying to enjoy a quiet evening.
Implementing a good digital platform and setting it up with specific permissions for each audience shows respect to the employee, which in turn drives a positive culture.
Simplifying the daily chore
How do you reach the unreachable employees without overwhelming them?
It’s easy to assume that desk-less and frontline employees are hard to reach. In most instances, they're not hard to reach, they're just easy to overlook.
When workload is not desk based - in hospitality for instance, housing, nursing, public services, construction, manufacturing, retail and multiple other industries - important information should be easy to find. Messages need to be short enough to read between real work tasks. And the platform that hosts these messages should help employees in their daily reality, not pull them away from it.
Technology becomes a tool when it helps, not hinders.
A workplace technology platform designed to be used
It’s not difficult. Design a digital workplace platform that puts employees first:
Make it mobile friendly, short, useful and relevant
Create a place that is worth opening because it’s useful
Add onboarding help, training guidance, shift schedules, holiday calendars
Localise comms for relevant store or location content
Ensure the platform is robust, easy to use and operationally sound
Automate the more mundane tasks
Using the right digital platform for employee engagement is really powerful with structure and consideration before implementation. When employees feel it’s been designed with them in mind, it has tremendous impact.
Start small and start with the pain points
Create an implementation that works from the first day. Ask employees, “what is currently annoying you every single week?” Choose a critical mass of deep problems and address these first. Employees will embrace the implementation because they see an immediate benefit. And as you grow features, usage will grow.
Don’t digitise for the sake of digitisation. Always start with employees and what will benefit them, how does it improve their welfare, their working life? Save them time from day one.
Consider starting with your most tech-savvy employees who are likely to give you valuable feedback. This helps perfect the implementation before a company-wide rollout.
Keep the workplace human
Technology can be a distraction. It can also take the human interface out of the environment. With all the AI impact, being more human, less machine, makes a big difference.
A digital platform feels human when it does more than just broadcast announcements. It should create visibility, appreciation, connection, recognition.
Shine the light on human interest stories, shout outs, positive reviews, good habits
Focus on moments where people feel seen, appreciated, connected
Use the platform to live the values, to make them visible every day, to drive the culture.
The future of employee experience is removing friction
The most successful organisations aren't trying to overwhelm employees with more communication or more technology.
They're making everyday work simpler by giving people one trusted place to find information, designing digital experiences around frontline realities rather than office assumptions, and creating technology that helps employees rather than distracts them.
Whether you're reviewing your employee communication strategy, replacing legacy platforms or looking to improve frontline engagement, the same principle applies:
Start with people's biggest frustrations
Fix those first
Everything else becomes easier.
At Work Networks, we help organisations design digital workplaces that improve communication, simplify operations and create better employee experiences for every colleague, wherever they work.
