ISS Produce: The Solution to Revolutionizing Communications with Deskless Employees on 24/7 Shifts

Challenge of Communicating to Deskless Workforce

Up until the summer of 2022 their employee communication process had not been able to keep their staff abreast of what was going on. Most of their workforce aren’t in front of computers day-to-day as 70-75% don’t have access to computers to do their role. This massively impacts communication because managers can’t just send an all-user email and expect everyone to get the message or put something on a company intranet and expect everyone to log on every day.

That was the reason for reaching out to OurPeople as they wanted to find out how they could engage and communicate with their staff, many of whom managers don’t necessarily see every day due to shift patterns. If employees are working shifts, particularly at night it is not practical for managers to come in for every night shift. The management team was finding they were struggling to, not only communicate bigger company announcements but to share small things such as ‘we packed a new product today’ or ‘we’ve brought in a new machine’ to help staff feel involved.

Staff Weren’t Feeling Involved

Before OurPeople, they used to use MailChimp a lot when MailChimp still hadn’t restricted the number of contacts you could send messages out to for free. However, it was time-heavy as they had to build email templates for each message. This meant they were having to put a lot of thought into content, with new templates. It also meant they wouldn’t send out content for smaller information. Previously they wouldn’t have bothered to communicate this type of information as it wasn’t an appropriate use of time to send out a MailChimp email to communicate it. It was also time-consuming to keep all the contacts up to date. They kept having to delete anyone who wasn’t working with the company and kept re-importing contacts to keep them up to date.

Streamlining Processes

As the platform is working so well for them internally, they are planning to do more with Smart Forms and look to build out this functionality further. This will be particularly helpful for shift planning or shift changes. Managers can make better use of putting out requests and tracking who has seen the messages and who has responded, thus streamlining the process entirely.

Across the business, the managers, the HR team, and the health & safety team are the main senders of messages, but the rest of the company are end users, benefiting from what OurPeople can offer.

The use of Broadcasts has made it a lot easier to get messages out quickly to everyone at the same time and not have to drive between sites to get messages out consistently. It is also good for communicating job vacancies as previously they were manually putting them up on noticeboards. The OurPeople process is now slicker and easier.

Kay Makin, when asked if she would recommend the platform, replied:

“Yes, absolutely, especially to those who have deskless employees. For companies, this is one of the most convenient ways to communicate especially as people are familiar with connecting with others online, so it is easy to get people to engage with it. It is also great to work with the support team at OurPeople as they have made the process simple and always respond quickly whenever we have queries, so it is nice to work with them.”