Although news headlines create the impression that people are being forced to return to offices, most of the world’s workforce is deskless, and was even before Covid. But whether it was working a shop floor, fast-food counter, or even away from the employer’s premises, those frontline workers created challenges for management while lacking flexibility in their jobs.
Abby Guthkelch recently became VP Executive Advisory at Flip, an app that transforms the deskless working experience for companies and staff. In the latest TechTalk with TFN she talks about her background, the difference Flip is making, and shares her views on how the workplace, and how it’s led, is changing.
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A career of transformation
Much of Guthkelch’s career has been about communication, working for a range of companies as well as running her own consultancy. But a common theme has been addressing the issues faced by frontline workers, including tens of thousands of postal workers. “I went to Royal Mail Group ahead of their IPO to help them to modernise and transform communications,” she told us. “One of my roles was within that was really looking at how to empower those frontline workers.” Her experience left her with a deep understanding of the challenges faced by many workers.
In 2019, when running her own consultancy, she was invited to join Facebook (now Meta) to work on their Workplace product. However, as her job expanded, Guthkelch found the role was losing its initial attractiveness. “Over the last couple of years, my remit expanded across the whole of the reality labs product portfolio,” Guthkelch told us. “I realised that I was starting to get further and further away from what had actually drawn me to work at Facebook and the Workplace product, which was around connecting the disconnected workforce.”
Attracted by Flip’s product and customer-centric approach, she became their VP Executive Advisory in November.
Connecting the disconnected
Flip was started by Benedikt Brand, who spotted the need for the app while working at Porsche in 2018. Working on it in his spare time, he developed a solution that makes it easy for all employees to stay updated and communicate.
Flip’s mission is to connect deskless workers. “Deskless workers make up 80% of the global workforce, and 66% have no access to corporate systems to do their jobs,” Guthkelch told us. That lack of connection makes it harder for companies to communicate with their workforce, and for their workforce to communicate with each other. It often means businesses adopt inflexible policies to manage problems that, in other places, are easily addressed through simple things like informal cover.
Rather than creating infrastructure, Flip offers a simple app that integrates everything the deskless worker may need. “Flip is the access layer that sits as the culmination of HR systems, operational tooling, and communications,” Guthkelch explained. “It’s about bringing together tools and systems into one super app.” It creates an interface that replaces things other workers may take for granted, from access to shifts to the simple conversations that could take place across desks in an office.
With attitudes to work changing — a process accelerated by the Covid pandemic — Guthkelch is clear that while the app will bring benefits to the employer, for their employees it can be transformational, and its real power lies in the day-to-day benefits it brings.
The changing workforce landscape
Flip helps deskless workers benefit from the flexibility that other workers have long enjoyed. “Flexible working isn’t just for desk-based employees,” Guthkelch asserts. “It’s about enabling self-service and shift-swapping through technology.”
It gives many workers a level of autonomy that had never been possible. “Transformation happens when you are empowering people to manage their schedules, do shift management, and more,” Guthkelch said. “All while giving them the opportunity to build community and culture.”
That human-centred approach is at the core of Guthkelch’s, and Flip’s, purpose, an approach that Guthkelch thinks is critical in the post-pandemic world. “People really found their voice and their power to say, ‘Do you know what? That’s not going to work for me anymore,’” Guthkelch said.
But when communication is a problem, sometimes those views are expressed starkly. “Five per cent of frontline workers won’t actually turn up for their first day,” Guthkelch says. Even for those that do turn up, difficulties with communication and access to onboarding systems create further problems. “Fast forward six months, 30% of them have dropped out of that company,” Guthkelch continued.
However, she thinks the solution is simple: making communication and flexibility easier. “A lot of people think … if you’re a deskless worker, then you can’t have flexibility. That’s incorrect,” she said. It has meant that Flip has spent a lot of time with frontline, deskless, workers to understand the issues and challenges they face, an approach she’s pleased many other tech founders are following. “Digital transformation needs to start with people first, not the tech first.”
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