Millions of essential mobile workers are spread out across the globe. They’re stocking shelves, installing equipment, repairing machinery—doing all the small unseen things that keep our global economy from breaking down.
Unfortunately, high turnover among these essential mobile workers—between 25% and 50%—is a very real problem that most companies face. This puts constant pressure on operations to keep pace, which means ensuring new employees must be onboarded quickly and effectively.
Another reality is that these workers increasingly need mobile technology — apps and devices — to do their jobs correctly. 75% of deskless workers say they spend most of their time at work using technology. Getting these workers up-to-speed quickly with the apps they need to succeed requires a more effective way to ensure they are proficient with their technology from day one.
Too often onboarding is treated as a one-and-done. That simply is not true and can ripple out into major losses and tremendous headaches.
To avoid onboarding failures, here are the three main problem areas companies need to be ready for.
1. Having the right subject matter experts.
Let’s say you’re learning about the size and scope of our universe. Who would you rather have as your professor: Stephen Hawking or Stephen Baldwin?
Having the right teachers in place can make a universe of difference when it comes to getting your workforce up to speed efficiently, and at the level required for the project’s success.
Too often, companies rely on local supervisors, line managers, and team leaders to onboard new employees on the technology they need to learn to be successful. But your operations managers aren’t training professionals, and they aren’t necessarily subject matter experts on the mobile technology themselves. And most importantly, managers and supervisors are among your most important employees who already have too much on their plates already. They need help in getting new hires up to speed quickly, not only on the processes they need to learn but the technology they need to master.
Ensuring you have the right training support system for your digital tools is essential.
So, how can you ensure new employees get the most effective teaching on their mobile technology?
With Skyllful, you can onboard new workers with their critical mobile technology rapidly and intelligently. Without burdening your operations managers and tech support, you can introduce more effective training, and get new hires up-to-speed quickly.
2. Consistency. Consistency. Consistancy. (See what we did there?)
Did you ever play the game telephone?
One person starts off the chain by whispering, “how can I ensure a mass mobile adoption platform for my thousands of workers?” After going down the line, the last person confidently stands up and shouts “purple monkey dishwasher!”
Existing approaches to mobile training can be a lot like that.
When onboarding new employees, how can you be sure they’re learning about their critical mobile applications the right way if they’re being trained by either the line manager or team leader?
By not consistently paying attention to proper training on mobile applications and other digital tools during the onboarding process, operations managers often wind up with massive problems when it comes to:
- High employee turnover
- Lost inventory
- Lost upsell opportunities
- Unmet SLAs
- Escalating service costs
Using Skyllful’s mobile adoption platform, workers are provided on-device training simulations based on their real-world and job-specific scenarios. This means that all new employees are learning the same skills, the same way, every time - ensuring consistency across the entire workforce.
3. Information overload.
Starting a new job is hard.
You’re meeting new people, working in a new environment, understanding your new roles and responsibilities—it can start to feel like a firehose of new information.
And something that can get lost in the shuffle is a proper appreciation of how your digital tools can help you better do your job.
Rather than having one big training session at the start of joining a team--a process where we’ve highlighted people forget 90% by the end of the month--utilizing a system of “micro-learning” over an ongoing basis allows new hires to learn at their own pace and refer back to previous lessons.
By avoiding that initial overload, we’re maximizing productivity while minimizing turnover.
With a strategic tech investment that is intuitively designed and easy to learn and use on a continuing basis by a mobile workforce, Skyllful is making onboarding simpler and smarter.
Field employee’s adoption of mobile applications goes hand-in-hand with job satisfaction. Ongoing support with advanced learning analytics, Skyllful’s mobile digital adoption ensures no mobile worker gets left behind.
Conclusion
Creating a plan to successfully onboard your new mobile workers is critical for staying on top of tight deadlines while avoiding disruptions
However, many companies overlook the critical step of ensuring new employees are prepared and proficient on the digital technologies they need to do their job effectively.
When it comes to onboarding your new hires, it’s essential to have the right subject matter experts, consistent learning environments, and provide ongoing support even after the final implementation.
If you can’t confidently answer those three critical onboarding issues, Skyllful is here to help.
With better support of new digital deployments, Skyllful is your one-stop shop for all your training and onboarding issues.
To see how our mobile DAP can improve your onboarding procedures today, tomorrow, and beyond, download our guide.
About Skyllful
Skyllful is a leading provider of a mobile digital adoption platform that helps companies with large, mobile workforces deploy mission-critical enterprise mobile applications smoothly and successfully. With deep expertise of mobile technology and best practice field deployments as well as a leadership team with decades of experience working with large enterprise mobile workforces and applications, Skyllful offers a platform for empowering field workers to use enterprise mobile apps more efficiently and effectively, maximizing the positive effect of mobile application deployments.
Skyllful’s approach to technology-driven training and engagement combines on-device, on-demand, contextual-based simulations, reinforcement activities, deep analytics and reporting on field readiness for an enterprise-wide view of mobile employees’ impact on the organization. Whether a company is deploying a new mission-critical workforce app or seeking to improve its workforce engagement with existing apps, the Skyllful platform is easy to use, intuitively designed and proven to increase productivity and deliver greater returns on investments in technology.