The Role of a Frontline-Workforce Platform in Attracting and Retaining Workers

A recent post from Accenture points out that there were 10.1 million job openings in America as of August 2022 and that attracting frontline workers remained a major challenge for businesses.

It seems almost paradoxical that most workers are looking for extra work to cover inflation while most organizations claim to have workforce shortages and are making active efforts to engage new people while trying their best to retain existing workers. The data presented shows that these organizations aren’t doing enough to attract and retain talent. Accenture highlights how this situation can be improved and how, by making certain changes, even smaller companies can develop thriving, capable, and technologically forward-looking workforces that deliver the best possible KPI results.

Today we will examine Accenture’s arguments with the added perspective of how, especially in manufacturing, the frontline-workforce platform an organization uses can support positive efforts to establish a better workforce ecosystem.

Speed to Start:

Companies are advised to onboard workers quickly, rather than having them wait to join and get to work. This allows workers to start making the money they need, but it also prevents them from looking at other options and choosing not to join. A frontline-workforce platform like Webalo lets companies do exactly this. It allows new workers to be inducted seamlessly from day one. How does this happen? It’s simple: The Webalo Platform is a great tool for training new workers on the job, and it allows them to learn their tasks through apps that run on their own mobile devices.

Once workers have received instructions on how to do what they are supposed to do, they feel familiarized with the operation and their role in it. The platform allows them to interact with others and gain insights, all from day one. Nothing improves the speed to start like a good platform that doubles as a process-execution and training tool!

Flexibility:

In the context of manufacturing, flexibility refers to the choice workers have to work in flexible shifts or take their breaks when they want to, rather than at a designated time. Instead of strict adherence to fixed shift timings, modern frontline workers prefer flexibility and the companies that provide it. Over the past two years or so, there has been a trend of workers shifting from higher-skill jobs to lower-skill jobs that offer more flexibility.

Companies can use the Webalo Platform to provide workers with the flexibility they are looking for. Since the platform orchestrates the entire operation and allows the frontline personnel to execute assigned tasks, it is easier to construct flexible shifts while still tracking the overall performance from a given area or department in comparison to the planned production schedule. With Webalo, workers feel empowered to own their tasks and are able to choose when and how to execute them to achieve their daily goals. Choice is flexibility, and that’s what you get with Webalo!

Room to Grow:

Every frontline worker seeks a career path. While stability and good pay are considered prerequisites, the way a company invests in their workforce and helps them grow not only their earnings but as professionals is fast becoming a deciding factor for workers and a differentiating factor for companies. Everything from providing educational opportunities to funding college goes a long way toward retaining and attracting talent.

A frontline-workforce platform like Webalo is an extremely important tool when it comes to giving personnel room to grow internally. Since everything from production schedules to work instructions and production logs to operator performance exists on a single platform, management has a bird’s-eye view of each individual and the amount of effort they put in. This helps management choose workers for better tasks and higher assignments in a fact-based and logical manner supported by actual data. It helps them groom frontline workers to climb further up the ladder to become operators or supervisors.

Webalo provides workers with room to grow and can be used to demonstrate how a company rewards performance and commitment!

Tech Boost:

AI and robotics can play a crucial role in attracting and retaining frontline manpower if they are positioned strategically to help improve day-to-day tasks and decision-making. Robots should be installed to do the “heavy lifting” so workers can concentrate on intricate, cognitive, and value-adding tasks. Similarly, AI should help workers make better decisions more quickly and should provide them with the proper facts to base their decisions on.

With Webalo, tech boost is expedited, and workers need not use multiple applications to connect and interact with IoT-enabled devices or gain access to AI insights. Intelligence and action are combined through a single platform, and power is delivered to the frontline’s palms through their mobile devices. They can make better decisions and interact with IoT-enabled equipment and robots all at the same time as they review the process information and analytical insights generated by their own actions.

Webalo is the only tech boost you need to attract and retain people in the age of AI and Robotics!

Diverse Workers:

Accenture points out that companies are tapping into what’s referred to as the “hidden workers” pool–an untapped pool of 24.7 million workers. While the numbers far exceed the current vacancy levels of 10 million or so, there might be challenges that come with hiring from this pool of workers.

The Webalo Platform can help manufacturers hire from the hidden worker pool despite specific challenges ranging from gaps in employment history to attending to a family member in need of care. Webalo allows workers to gain work-related insights from the get-go and simplifies work such that workers don’t need to remember a complex combination of steps and instructions. Any activity is broken down into tasks that need to be executed one at a time. This allows workers to feel more attuned to their responsibilities while ensuring that the company doesn’t suffer any losses due to the special conditions a frontline worker faces.

With Webalo, companies can truly embrace worker diversity and focus on building a thriving ecosystem!

A mobile-enabled and intuitive workforce platform could just be the x factor that alleviates all of a manufacturer’s frontline-worker woes. The task of choosing the right platform belongs to an organization’s decision-makers. It is critical that the choice is driven by the platform’s ability to deliver better working conditions for the frontline while making verifiable improvements through stages of implementation, adoption, and normalization. So, choose wisely. Choose Webalo!