After a period of shutdown many businesses are beginning to reopen, and more and more frontline workers are returning to the field. These workers are not returning to the same jobs they left; increased regulation, hygiene policies, social distancing recommendations and more means that frontline workers need to be trained and empowered to do their jobs well in a post-lockdown world.

Traditional face to face training methods rely on close quarter contact, lengthy travel for trainers between sites and groups of workers being trained simultaneously which is no longer feasible. We’re asking businesses if it is time to consider remote expert guidance for their teams? To enable the frontline to achieve maximum output despite restricted conditions.

What is remote expert guidance?

Remote expert guidance involves the use of in-the-field technology to connect the worker directly with experts right from their place of work when they require additional assistance. This guidance can come in many forms, using mobile devices to share live video, augmented reality tools or a video conference with an expert.

Why would remote expert guidance be needed by the frontline?

Frontline workers are the eyes and ears of any organisation, whether they are the first point of contact with the public or they are the people on the factory floor, frontline workers are usually the first to see issues when they arise. On-the-job mentoring in a traditional sense is no longer an option for most organisations as workers and mentors cannot meet face-to-face in any meaningful way, a simple method of bridging this gap is to deploy remote expert guidance. Enabling frontline workers to immediately access expert coaching remotely in the line of duty provides them with the confidence to tackle difficult or unfamiliar tasks as they arise.

How can remote expert guidance be deployed to the frontline?

Digital innovation is a sticky topic at the moment. The average office worker was furnished with all of the digital tools required for them to collaborate seamlessly with their co-workers from home as soon as lockdown began. For frontline workers, who typically cannot perform their duties from the safety of their homes, the pandemic highlighted just how ill equipped many are when it comes to digital tools.

The first step in deploying remote expert guidance to the frontline is to equip our essential workers with the technology they need to perform their roles as efficiently as possible with live mentorship and support at their fingertips. A recent survey carried out by Over-C found that only 45% of frontline workers have access to mobile technology and only 20% are able to use a mobile device to manage their work in situ. Two thirds (64%) of frontline workers who say they have access to tools such as mobile technology state that it allows them to do their jobs quicker and easier on a daily basis.

Once workers have the digital tools at their fingertips, accessing training content remotely can be done in a number of ways. Using a workforce management app like Over-C you can trigger pre-recorded training video content for workers once they check-in to certain locations of a building or when a sensor picks up their location. This helps frontline workers do their jobs better and gives you confidence they are heading in to do the job with all the training to hand. Additionally, the app allows you to trigger a questionnaire to be completed by the staff member where you can ask them to confirm they have watched or read the training material and even ask them to upload an image of the work completed once it’s done. Additional tools can be used such as augmented reality, whereby the worker would overlay the camera from their smart device (e.g. phone, smart glasses etc.) with the task at hand and an expert can relay guidance to them to complete task by digitally overlaying information of the workers’ environment.

Remote expert guidance is another tool in our frontline workers’ digital utility belt that empowers them to get the #jobdone.

To find out more about the benefits of the Over-C solution you can read more here: https://over-c.com/solution/benefits