While companies bang on about digitally transformation, remote and hybrid work, the deskless workforce is notoriously underserved according to a new report from Skedulo.
The past two years of distributed work and accelerated digital transformation have changed work for the better. Namely, today’s knowledge workers benefit from unprecedented levels of autonomy and flexibility. But at the same time, workers who sit at a desk in a traditional office setting are rare and account for just one in five employees around the world. The other 80 percent of the global workforce is deskless, traveling and operating in the field.
The findings showcase some alarming statistics concerning digital transformation for deskless workers – a proof point that companies need to start taking note of the 80 percent of the global workforce they make up, or risk losing them completely.
The report found that technology adoption rates among deskless workers trail desk-based workers – 15 percent of deskless respondents still use mostly paper processes (at least 75 percent paper-based processes or greater), vs. only five percent of desk-based respondents.
Nearly half of deskless respondents would rather work for an organisation providing flexible scheduling or increased autonomy over one able to pay them ten percent more.
Respondents named their five biggest challenges as, managing their workloads, limited flexibility, insufficient technology, limited autonomy and communicating with customers.
