How supply chain organizations use WorkStep to increase worker productivity

In today’s competitive market, boosting worker productivity is a critical goal for supply chain organizations. As the primary drivers of an organization’s productivity, it’s important to invest in frontline workers’ engagement.

Unlike traditional employee engagement platforms, WorkStep delves into the unique needs of the frontline workforce with a focused methodology that prioritizes continuous listening in an accessible way to reach every worker. Our approach goes beyond employee sentiment with predictive analytics that can help organizations tie employee feedback to specific actions that drive better productivity outcomes.

Utilize productivity-centric employee survey question sets & themes

WorkStep’s continuous employee listening solution is tailored to the needs of frontline workers and measure their sentiments around common pain points impacting them. Our ready-made frontline worker question set includes questions about tools, training, manager relationships, overall workload, and scheduling. We then categorize the questions and feedback into workforce engagement themes such as career growth, pay, onboarding, manager relationship, and general satisfaction, which helps organizations easily hone in on the themes impacting their workforce most.

Organizations using WorkStep find that our employee engagement mechanisms help identify productivity-related issues facing their workforce and use these insights to drive efficiency.

For example, one of WorkStep’s recommended questions is “I have the tools and equipment I need to do my job well.” A low favorability score in the “tools” theme may indicate the need for better tooling to drive efficiency. With WorkStep, organizations can dive into this theme and read employee comments to spot the specific gaps.

Unlike traditional employee listening solutions, which can take days or weeks to deliver actionable results, WorkStep provides specific, granular real-time feedback so site leaders can act swiftly before a challenge leads to a larger issue.

Draw correlations between employee engagement and worker productivity

According to Harvard Business Review, productivity and efficiency are directly correlated, citing that organizations with a high level of employee engagement report 22% higher productivity results. WorkStep directly supports driving better employee engagement and productivity as a byproduct. It also helps organizations hone in on productivity issues at their core, as organizations can draw correlations between their worker productivity and dips or rises in engagement themes.

Let’s say, for example, that the organization notices a dip in order fulfillment rates between August and October and needs to determine the root cause of the downward trend. Within WorkStep’s favorability insights organizations can immediately draw the correlation between lower order fulfillment rates and decreased employee morale when looking at the same timeframe as the dip.

Organizations can further dig into favorability metrics by engagement theme during that same timeframe to get additional insights. For example, here, we can see that the  “manager relationship” favorability took a hit during this same timeframe.

And we also see that tooling favorability is down.

Using WorkStep’s favorability heatmap, organizations can narrow in on the specific workforce segments (such as locations and job roles) to see if there is a specific subset of people who have experienced lower favorability rates during this timeframe. In this case, it is quickly identified that forklift operators and quality control checkers have the lowest favorability scores in tooling during this timeframe.

In this situation, an organization would also see that their Bowling Green, Raleigh, and San Jose locations are ranking tooling with the lowest favorability.

Using a variety of WorkStep insights, the organization has been able to conclude a potential root cause in their order fulfillment drops tied directly back to employee favorability in specific locations and job roles.

Identify and address specific issues related to worker productivity

Once the organization has drawn correlations between employee engagement themes and productivity, it may also want to identify specific issues that need to be addressed.

To find out, an organization can use WorkStep’s most granular look at employee feedback: employee comments from the roles and locations most impacted. Here are a few real examples of comments that surfaced from frontline workers:

• “The equipment we rely on to complete our jobs is increasingly unreliable. This causes additional time on every task we do and can create safety concerns.”
• “Label machine not working properly.”

In some cases, organizations may find that employee comments surface clear, specific actions such as a label machine needing to be fixed like in the example above.

In other cases, employee comments are vague and the organization may choose to solicit more information directly from the employee. In these situations, WorkStep uses artificial intelligence (AI) to solicit additional context on the surfaced issues: Bright AI.

If further context is required, WorkStep enables managers and leaders through confidential bi-directional communication that allows managers to reply directly to the employee and have a conversation about the issue, all while maintaining employee confidentiality.

With each new comment or additional context uncovered, the organization can gain a clear understanding of the issues that need to be addressed. Now, it’s time to act.

Take action to improve worker productivity and measure impact

Once an appropriate course of action is identified, WorkStep can help organizations measure and quantify the impact of their micro- or macro-actions over time.

Let’s say the organization decides to take one small action: fixing the label machine for the quality control checkers in the San Jose location.

Using WorkStep’s unique Impact Tracker, management can set a start date for the new initiative (segmented only to the San Jose location & Quality Control Checkers role) and track that group’s favorability over time after the label machine was fixed.

This helps organizations demonstrate the value of their various investments.

Continue to monitor productivity trends amongst the frontline workforce

WorkStep monitors hundreds of trending topics across our large dataset of frontline workers. Within WorkStep, account owners can see at a glance what productivity topics are trending across their frontline workforce and quickly analyze the sentiment of those topics.

A few productivity-related topics that WorkStep might surface include deadlines, delays, efficiencies, processes, and schedules. If these topics are top of mind for an organization’s workforce, it will be apparent and visible in their trending topics dashboard along with the overall sentiment and any changes in the frequency a particular topic is mentioned.

A deep dive into the specific comments by topic and/or employee engagement theme further helps organizations understand their workforce opportunities.

WorkStep: your partner in organizational productivity and efficiency

Embracing the future of frontline workforce management with WorkStep means efficiency and productivity are not just goals, but realities. WorkStep is more than a tool; it’s a long-term partner in the journey towards a stronger, more productive workforce.