The main goal of any manufacturing company is production. But in order to enable your employees to do their best work, you’ll need to extend your internal communications strategy to the work floor.
You may be surprised to find that production levels increase when your factory workers are informed and connected. What’s more, is that you could prevent all kinds of hiccups just by reaching the production floor faster and more efficiently.
According to a report by Deloitte, 49% of production workers waste an average of 10 minutes per hour due to issues with technology, such as a lack of devices. This translates to a productivity loss of nearly three hours a week (!), simply because floor workers cannot communicate issues effectively.
Luckily, technology is starting to catch up. New research is increasingly highlighting the negative economic impact that goes hand in hand with the lack of inclusion of floor workers in internal communications. One of the most effective ways to get this done is by equipping these employees with a company-branded employee app. In fact, operations can thrive when you provide factory employees with the right tools and information they need. Not to mention, safety practices are easier to implement, and there’s a general increase in employee engagement when employees feel connected to your product and/or brand.
So, how do you grow your internal communications strategy to reach production workers who are dispersed across the work floor? Here are 3 things you can do to streamline your frontline communication and contribute to employee engagement and well-being.
Share news as it happens
With such a large number of factory workers, face-to-face communication isn’t always possible and emails are now a relic of the past (according to so many sources, like this one). And when things take a turn for the worse, you need the fastest way to share updates with your workforce. You know as well as we do that the health and safety of your frontline workforce is a critical factor on the production floor. So, how do you communicate in times of crisis when you only have a moment’s notice?
Let’s face it, frontline communication is part of the future of work. That’s where an employee app with a messaging feature, like Speakap, comes in handy.
Keep everyone in the loop with:
- Company news updates that include ‘read acknowledgment’
- Media files such as photos and videos
- One-on-one messaging and group messaging
- Safety information
In fact, your frontline employees are already using mobile technology which saves you the hassle of introducing new tools in the workplace.
Reach production workers in their own language
According to research (we’re just following the science folks, and so should you!), one of the largest challenges that they face with their frontline communication is the ability to connect with production workers in their own language. That’s why we built a translation feature as part of our employee app. Now everyone on the factory floor understands the message without any language barrier, which ultimately increases employee engagement.
Meet your employees where they are – use an employee app
In order to do their best work, manufacturing and frontline employees need specific tools that cater to their day-to-day circumstances (which are vastly different from your own office life). At the same time, we know that the rapid rise of technology has led to a huge spike in employee tools – which ironically decreases productivity. In order to meet employees where they are, instead of saddling them with just another tool, an employee app – easily accessed through everyone’s mobile phones – can provide answers.
There are several tools out there, though ours is especially effective because of our frontline-specific features. One of the ways we make it easier for you to reach your frontline is by integrating with every other tool in your arsenal, such as scheduling and payroll. That means employees only need one app to access all their info. Having a single sign-on makes every other tool in your box automatically accessible and easier to locate. And if your frontline employees need instant access to schedules or to swap or replace shifts, the shift manager shouldn’t waste time figuring it out. The employee app will help facilitate it. That goes for any instant communication needed between corporate office, shift managers, and floor workers.