Name: Beyond Binders: Modern Training for the Deskless Workforce
Uploaded: 2025-10-01T18:17:25.486Z
Duration: 1 h
Description: Beyond Binders: Modern Training for the Deskless Workforce

Transcript for "Beyond Binders: Modern Training for the Deskless Workforce": Hello, everyone. Welcome to our webinar today. We are absolutely thrilled to have you joining us, and we really hope that you enjoy today's presentation and, the walk that we've prepared to inspire students and make positive impact on careers as they move out of the higher education space. My name is Pete Morgan. I will be your host for today. I am on the Echo360 team. I'm the director of our corporate sales venture, but that really doesn't mean anything because we're the real reason that we're here is to be able to have our experienced guest, our perfect guest here with us, and we are beyond excited to have our presenter, doctor Muriel Clauson Closs here with us, who is the CEO and cofounder of Anthill. Now before I I get into the mix here, before we get let, let, our our aspired guest be able to present and talk to you, which is the real reason you wanna be here. I am gonna just take care of a little bit of housekeeping, make sure that everybody understands kinda how we get rolling here inside of Goldcast to make sure you get the most out of your webinar today. We are gonna last just about forty five minutes. There will be time for q and a at the end, but personally, don't let that hold you back from sending in messages. Everything's being recorded. We want to hear all of your thoughts, and we would love to have a discussion on these points just as much as we're asking questions and be able to hear your thoughts. If you do choose to send in messages in any way, you can, throughout the presentation, use the polling. You can prepare your questions through the q and a. You can put them inside of the chat. But we would prefer, if you would, that in order to put questions in that we can pay attention to, use the q and a function. That's really the fastest way that we're gonna be able to pay attention to what's being said there, and that will help us orient ourselves on our side to take those questions. You'll also see the chat function. You can utilize that for more of your interpersonal communication between those that are listening. So open up the chat, introduce yourself, tell us where you're coming from, what company, what institution. And if you have anything supportive towards the rest of the audiences here, please feel free to drop those links or relevant resources inside of that space. Your experience here is just as much as you make it. So please go ahead and use those technologies at your, at your disposal, and let's make this fantastic. Now no one wants to hear me take the frame here for any longer. So, Dr. Muriel, we're just beyond excited to have you inside of here, and I think maybe just to get us started, especially for those that are here with us and will be watching the recording post recording. I was hoping that maybe we can set the stage and open up to have you describe and define for us really what is a deskless worker, and perhaps how many of those people fall into that category across the labor market today? Yeah. Absolutely. And thank you so much for inviting me to be here today, Pete. So deskless workers, this is a word that we've heard a lot more recently, but you've heard other words for this population over the years. For a while, it's kind of fallen out of fashion. Folks would maybe say blue collar. Sometimes you hear them referred to as hourly. Sometimes they're referred to as frontline workers. But what a deskless worker is, essentially, is they do not complete their work sitting at kind of an information technology source like a computer. They do not complete their job sitting at a desk. So we find these folks across eight industries. We see them in education, health care, manufacturing, agriculture, more industries where, basically, they are not kind of held back by a desk. They're unleashed. They're free to go work in the field. They're on a floor. They're in a warehouse context. But what they're mostly defined by and what we've seen kind of through a lot of research is that they have a materially different relationship to their employer. They have a materially different relationship to work because they're not completing their work. Their kind of core job tasks are not through, a piece of technology. It doesn't have to be kind of through a computer to do their job. They're not necessarily, trading in emails and ideas kind of in meetings. They are doing typically more manual, physical, in the field, in front of a customer type of work. And one thing I think that folks often, overlook is how different that type of working is. There's a couple exceptions within kind of a couple of those industries, but most deskless work is just a completely different relationship to work than the type of work you're doing if you have a desk job. And I think cultivating empathy for that is what helps us actually train these folks well and support these folks well. You asked me also how many folks make up this population. It's over 80% of the global workforce, over 60% of the workforce in The United States. We're talking over 2,500,000 workers globally that do these jobs. It is the predominant way of working, and so it's a really important population to think about serving. Oh, absolutely. And, I mean, when I when we even say majority, 80% is a wild number. So thinking about that I mean, we don't even need to say vast majority. The absolute majority of the global for workforce being that way, it's amazing to me that training, especially standard or typical training, really isn't necessarily designed for that type of worker in mind. That we're you talked very specifically about, right, they don't don't always have the technology right in their fingertips. Their job isn't around that specific type of technology. So when we think about cultivating and designing or curating a training with them in mind, I'm interested to know a little bit of your perspective on why this this vast enormous majority of the workforce has been, dare we say, underserved for so long. Yeah. So it's interesting because especially in this country, kind of since I'd say about the nineteen thirties, we've kind of told people that if you wanna build a good life, you go to college and you go that track and you become a knowledge worker. Right? That's been the kind of the predominant narrative that folks have heard. And there's also we've seen that kind of investment in companies. Companies spend, almost 95% of their typical spend to support workers, to create retreat environments, to have, like, special events for workers, to train workers has historically gone to their desk workers, to their knowledge workers. And so there's been this kind of big disparity in kind of how we've even valued this type of work. Now that doesn't make sense if you look at the numbers. Like, there is a shortage of folks going into these jobs. It is super expensive for companies to have the kind of turnover they're having with these populations. And I think folks are waking up to that and realizing, well, we have to care a little bit more about this population. But I think part of it too is the folks often making the decision around, oh, well, what technologies are we gonna invest in? What training or resource are we gonna invest in? By no fault of their own, their lived experience is just very different than these workers. They're sitting at a computer, so it makes sense you think about software in a certain way and you think about resources in a certain way. Their kind of working style is different. So I don't I don't think that, you know, there's some conspiracy because these workers have folks that tried to leave them out, but that's just been a natural kind of thing that has happened when we've, a, kind of not really valued this work as much as we really need to if you look at the numbers, and b, just kind of designed experiences more so with those desk workers in mind. There's a few things that we've seen really consistently, that make a difference for this population. I'm sure we'll get into today, and those things are not necessarily, like, major tweaks. It's just a little bit of a mindset shift that you need to have as an organization. Right. Well, and I think that plays into a little bit of maybe where I wanna lead the conversation from here. When I think about the deskless worker, you really specifically talked about, a a few of those things, especially the job force, is more on, like, the the physical demand. I'm producing something or I'm on the line somewhere, and I'm interacting with a customer face to face. Now in those positions, in order to effectively train someone, we generally see training as like a removal from the day to day at a placement inside of a zero risk, minimal stakes training environment to get somebody up to speed. But as we're talking about this, pulling someone off the floor in a deskless job also probably means a drop in productivity. So I I would love your insight a little bit on on maybe approaches that you've seen or strategies that you've, you've seen be effective to balance the operational needs of these workers doing and performing their work and effective learning to be able to bring them up to speed on the training aspect. Yeah. I love that. And first, I wanna take a step back. So, like, why would training even matter in these jobs? Right? I I think that's a good first thing to consider. So one reason that training matters a ton for deskless workers is that the deskless worker population is aging out. And so, a, we have a lot of just turnover that is naturally gonna happen across these workforces. Nurses, average age of nurses in pretty much every state in The US right now is over 50. The average age of cable operators, folks kind of in field services, repairing wires, cable lines, all these things, average age over 55. We see this across a lot of deskless worker population. Additionally, if you take kind of the number of folks that are expected to kind of retire by 2030 in The US and then add the number of folks that are gonna enter the workforce in that time, and then if you look at kind of just a conservative estimate of kind of how many jobs will be created, we end up with kind of about 12,000,000 new jobs during that time. And then we're gonna have kind of roughly 44 kind of million feet folks retiring. And then if you look at folks entering the workforce, we end up with essentially, when you do the math, about a million and a half new workers for those 12,000,000 new jobs. Of those million and a half new workers, if you ask young people sentiment, which jobs do you wanna go into, you end up with about 20% that are projected to go into a deskless job. So the math is truly not matting. Like, we do not have enough people. So if we're not equipping folks well, if we're not capturing the knowledge well of those folks that are exiting the workforce, if we're not doing a good job of really cultivating the skills of our new workforce, we literally are just are not gonna have enough folks doing these jobs, and they're not gonna be doing the loss. Training, super, super critical. It's not a nice to have. It's a have to have. So how do we actually do that well then is the question. And you and you talked about pulling folks off the floor. So I think this is a common concern. Let's take an advanced manufacturing context. If they say, hey. We wanna train our people. They need to learn things, but we've got production goals on this floor. We've gotta keep folks on the floor. Well, I would challenge that. Do we necessarily? Now one of the things that has hurt retention across frontline or deskless jobs is that a lot of times, they would see, hey. There's these colleagues that got to work from home during the pandemic. They have maybe Fridays working from home or Mondays working from home. I don't get to have that. Well, is there a way to actually create a work from home kind of alternative for training for those workers potentially? I don't know. Something to think about. Is there a way to offer these benefits that help you retain these workers for your training? But then let's say, okay. We do wanna keep folks on the floor. Well, there's incredibly, powerful technology innovations recently that have made it possible to train individuals in the flow of work Right. In a really individualized way. So there's ways that we don't necessarily just have to pull everyone into the break room, throw something up on a projector, and, like, hope they got it in that, like, kind of thirty minutes we're in there together. We could make it that, well, okay. I'm walking up to this machine. I, my employer has maybe ingested kind of the manual of this machine and some of the other lessons. They've used AI to maybe help surface some of those insights for me so that when I have questions, I can actually, just in the flow of work, get those questions answered as I'm learning this machine. So there's incredible kind of innovative approaches, but I think some of them are kind of technology enabled looking at training differently. But some of them are also just, like, human. Like, well, hey. Is there a way to actually support this workforce and give them something like a work from home opportunity to do their training at home? Is that something we could do? Right. You you said in the flow of work, and I'm gonna come to that because I use this phrase constantly in good effective training. But I also I wanna take almost just a step back into what you were describing there as well around production goals or things on the floor. I've done some specific work with, with a group inside of a factory. And what's interesting around the the concept of production goals and needing to meet a quota, that's always the frontline conversation piece that I hit when we talk about training face to face with someone. Well, I have a production goal. I can't take people off the floor. I love your challenge because in asking correct questions, I've been able to even peel back some of those layers to say, your your production goals, yes, are based on what you interpret as your best people on the line. But how do we recreate more of those best people on the line? And the way to do that is effective training. And if we can produce an opportunity that gets people in the flow of work that is able to curate and and target those that need upskilling or need to be able to have this hands on sort of training opportunity while leaving your very best on the line and not taking them off the flow. That's a way that production goals can still be met while reinforcing the new age of the new group that is going to come in to to backfill or to support in that way. Yes. Absolutely. And I I love what you said of just, like, challenging some of those assumptions. Like, oh, this isn't gonna work because x. Like, the other flip side is say, well, what are we losing by not trading these folks? Like, we've talked a little bit about the shortage. I don't think there's anyone sitting in an LND, HR role, operations role at any company with any amount of deskless workers that isn't thinking about the shortage. Right? Yeah. So is it better to have everyone on the floor a 100% of the time working on production, or is it more important that, well, we're actually an employer of choice because it's a great Play Doh's to work and you're supported well, So we're not actually having turnover at the rate of our competitors because we're that employer of choice. They wanna stay here. And maybe that means we're pulling folks off the line sometimes, but we're actually able to keep our operation going because we have kind of that human power that we need. Yeah. So not just assuming the status quo. And that that's actually the way I would just say in general. Like, just assume that you really have, like, so many things to try at your fingertips, when it comes to training this workforce because so little has been tried. Like, so many of the companies that we work with and talk to, like, we're not even talking about, oh, how do we take this software and have a slightly better software? Like, no. We're not talking increment incremental change right now. Like, these workforces have been given so little, and you like, the sky's the limit on what you can try right now. Like, there is just so much opportunity. It's also interesting because I think when you when you think of, like, oh, engaging workers too, which I think a goal of training should be engaging workers and making them feel supported. Like, we think, oh, okay. Well, maybe we need to do, like, an employee retreat or, like, some fancy event or something. That's not often what deskless workers are asking for. They're asking they're like, just give us, like, something that helps us do better. Give us a little bit of a voice. Give us, like, a little bit here. Like, you can make so much more of a difference so quickly, I think, with the deskless workforce if you invest there. Yeah. And I love I love the key term there, invest. I I think to me personally, it does not have to be the retreat. It does not have to be a dinner. It doesn't have to be anything that way per se. Those things are helpful. But at the end of the day, as an as an employee, as a worker, I want to feel invested in just as much as I'm I'm placing or or driving an investment for the company that I'm a part of. So let let's tie that together with with that key phrase from, before, in the flow of work. So maybe describe for us a little bit, how do you think organizations can begin to design training that really does fit in the flow of work, whether someone's on a factory floor or a restaurant or a hospital, but keying in on training in the flow of work and investing in our people. What are some of the strategies or things that you think could be designed for training in that way? Yeah. Absolutely. So I I love this question because I think sometimes and especially if you have, like, compliance constraints in your industry. I think that we can think of it training as kind of checking a box. Like, okay. Cool. We did our OSHA training. Box checked. Good good to go. We care the truth of that, and that's not going away. We're gonna have to check boxes. That's great. But what actually really helps people learn, what really helps people upskill and grow is often experiential learning and actually, like, doing the thing and getting that kind of validation, getting that kind of in the moment right support that they need. And that's why, for example, when nurses are trained in The United States, nursing schools have simulations where after you've kind of learned in the classroom, you're in the simulation where in real time you say, oh, okay. This this kind of a dummy patient has fallen, and we're gonna now have to figure out, like, how do we navigate this and all of this. Now this is something that is very, very expensive to offer, like, in a nursing school context. Right? It's very expensive to do those simulations. It's very expensive when we do, if if you're familiar with it kind of at the executive level, they're called assessment centers where you run executives through kind of simulation type things. Those are expensive things to do historically. They just got a lot to grow with innovations like AI. You're now in a in a context where maybe you need to check the box with a formal training on, like, manufacturing safety or, this is or this is how we're gonna interact with kind of customers, during this, like, kind of seasonal opportunities or training of seasonal workers for that. But in the flow, you're gonna have questions that come up. You're going to be doing the thing and realizing, like, oh, here's a place where I could use a little more support. And being able to kind of ask questions of that training that you just did and get those answers, like, in real time gives you that kind of simulation type experience. So it's a really great kind of reinforcer of the learning that you're doing, and you're able to do that now in such a kind of, like, less expensive, more personalized way because of some of the recent technology innovation. So I I think that also, like, it's not either or. Like, I think there's still a really great spot for, like, kind of, like, let's check the box. Let's do that more traditional training. But then if you end there, I think you're really missing the opportunity to do that reinforcement and really help folks with that over time. The other great thing about in the flow of work training is, some of your best ideas of what folks even need to be learning are gonna come from the workers themselves. Like, these are often the folks closest to your customer, closest to your product. Like, these are people that really are gonna see things that no l and d leader will see. And so having seeing what even questions they have, seeing what kind of problems they encounter will help even shape what the learning needs are in your organization. I think they also just have really good ideas. Whenever someone talks about upscaling or, like, oh, if we implement this kind of augmenting or automating technology, like, what will that mean for the workers? My first thing is, like, let's ask the workers. Like, ask them now what they're free to do. And I think that a big part of this learning journey and in the flow of the work journey is, well, what to kind of what do we see the workers needing? What do we see them asking for? What ideas do we see them putting in? So I think that's a big part of it too is that it's two way. Oh, absolutely. And I think I think that we talked about the investment of coming into or the investment that I want as a as an employee, I wanna be invested in. The best way to do that is to give me a voice, and let me see the way that my voice is crafting positive change. Now two way communication, you're leading into exactly where I think I wanna head with this. But I also had just the thought that popped in, and I I would love your insight because I've had some people, disagree with me here. But as you're describing in the flow of work, effective training that it is real and it's something applicable to the real space, I remember being an eight year old kid playing baseball and having a coach crushed by dreams in the most positive way possible when he said practice does not make perfect. That's a lie. Perfect practice makes perfect. And I would I would change that in my, in my wise age now, right, to say practice in correct flow, in the flow of work, in real life situation makes perfect. Right? It it can't just be practice for practice sake. We can't practice bad habits or get on off into tangents. We have to be presented with effective opportunities to understand what I will be fronted with in the real world and practice those in the flow of work and effectively in order to boost recall and be able to, effectively perform those tasks when the actual task is fronted on me. Now part of that ties into what you just said. I I I I'm gonna I'm gonna pause for a moment because I see you nodding and that's great. And I wanna hear what you have to say, but that plays into where I wanna go as well. Oh, yeah. Well, I I think that's I think that's just like I think it's just so important that we give people a chance to also kind of, like, have that experience to just, like, to learn by doing. And I think that, unfortunately, a lot of our frontline jobs, a lot of our deskless jobs are very, very high stakes from a safety perspective or from, like, the client or his perspective. So there's actually less kind of leash to do that, in the kind of day to day with the way things are set up today. If we give people these companions, like, maybe it's a AI agent that helps me do my job, we're actually just making it easier for them to have those learning opportunities to have that in the flow of work support. But with it being lower risk to the business because we know they have that companion to kind of help them if they get into trouble or get come across an issue. So I think that's where some of this is really exciting too. Yep. Definitely. Now I pushed this in one direction. I'm gonna wrangle us back because you did bring up a point talking about this entire this we call it a pathway being two way. We think about that in terms of communication. Often, communication at its core is really the biggest gap that we have inside of these situations where we're not getting effective or in the flow when it comes to good training. So talk to me about in your your experience, especially, you being the expert here. What is the role of effective two way communication when it comes to building trust, improving retention, with anyone that would be considered a deskless worker? Yeah. I love this question. This is, like, the problem I've been most passionate about solving for a lot of years as a researcher and in the work we do at Anthill, because back when I was kind of first doing some of this research even all the way back as a grad student, I was just shocked by how little employers were communicating with their deskless workforce. For example, like, still, the majority of kind of distribution centers in The United States, there is no way to kind of, like, through a tech enabled way, like, ask question of your employer or, like, say something. Like, you pretty much just get things announced to you. Right? Like, oh, that's terrible. Like, would you want a friendship or any kind of relationship with someone that, like, never listened to anything you said? They just announced things at you. Like, no. That's terrible. Right? Like, communication has to be two way, and I think that it's just, I think people don't even realize how much that's lacking a lot of times with the deskless portion of their workforce. And there's a few reasons for that. Like, one, like, we're not usually provisioning our Microsoft Teams or our Google licenses to that workforce. We're not provisioning technology to that workforce. We're not actually even, like, using a lot of the mediums that we do our communication as an organization. So there's just nothing there. And, like, in that vacuum, we have folks that maybe one day I'm sick or my child is and I can't come in. I actually don't even know how to tell you that, so you think I just quit. Like and we just had turnover that's, like, regrettable at this, like, distribution center, and we didn't even want that. Like, nobody wanted that. Like, so there were when I talk about communication issues at the desk of this workforce, I think folks don't actually even realize, like, how broken it can be in a lot of these organizations. And we don't have to make incremental change. We can, like, really leapfrog ahead because I think what, like, we have the tools today, whether it's through Anthill or something else. Like, there are ways to basically make it that folks can ask questions, get help, do all these things, and even have that supported a little bit by automation if you don't have maybe the human power in that organization to support all those conversations. Like, there is a way to allow people to ask questions, get answers. There's a way to kinda have that that pull from the worker and that, like, communication from the worker. So I think that's the first thing is, like, make sure it's actually two way because a lot of times, it's just not two way. And you're definitely not gonna have two way communication around training if you don't have it around basics like attendance. Right? That is like that's not gonna be there. So that's that's part one. For part two, though, like, I think that, it several years ago, we did a series of focus groups and a lot of kind of, surveys across a lot of deskless workers. We end up having over 10,000 deskless workers' voices, represented. We were like, well, what are the things you, like, need from your employer that you're not getting? And it was interesting because a few of the things that came up, I think were just like communication challenges. One was, like, I want to feel valued. Like, the things I'm doing in this organization are actually important to the organization. One was, like, I want a way that I can, like, ask questions. Another was, like, I want to, like, actually have a voice. Like, I wanna be, somebody that, like, you would, like, listen to what I have to say about, like, the work that I'm doing, which sounds so basic. Right? If you're a knowledge worker, like, of course, that's a part of it, but it's not necessarily. One is, like, I wanna feel safe. Like, if you think about all of these things, like, none of that's gonna be possible if you're not in conversation. Right? Like, a safety, like, that's like, I need to be able to say when there's something not safe. Right? Or, like, that's I think that that's how I think about it through a training lens is for all of these things, are we actually caring about that two way piece? And is there that reciprocity? Like, if we wanna build trust, if we wanna engage folks, if we wanna retain folks, if we wanna train folks, like, all of these things are dependent upon what we are I'll often talk about, Angela, is the reciprocity loop. Like, am I getting what I need from you as an employer so that I'm then bought in to make those investments with you and to learn these new things? And so part of that is meeting basic needs. Part of that is, like, okay. Those, like, simple requests were there for you on those things. But part of it is on those higher order things like training, are we actually meeting you where you are and caring about, like, your part of that story? Like, are we just checking boxes or do we, you know, do we say, like, if we talked about earlier, like, hey. We're we have this new, technology that's gonna help with automating this part of what you do on the floor. Like, what does that free up for you? Like, where do you wanna take time? Like, here's some training modules we can offer. You like, which one are you interested in? Like, really basic pieces like that. So that's where I get excited. And if we build that kind of two way relationship and we have that reciprocity, we've then built that muscle for that kinda in the flow of work kind of reciprocity loop too of, like, okay. I did this training, and now I'm, like, trying this thing, and, like, here's an idea I have, and here's, like, question I have. And and it builds and builds and builds. So that's what I would say mainly on two ways. Like, build the foundation, make sure there's even a way to have two way communication with you to begin with, but then infuse that into everything you do because that's that's life, that's relationships, and that's how you're gonna build trust and engagement. Yeah. Well, your examples are so perfect. You're making me reconsider, I mean, even the way that I I talk to my children. Right? Like, they're they're no. I'm I'm now reconsidering every word that comes out of my mouth and making sure that it is I'm investing in my kids just as much as they are. They're providing something to me when listening to directions. That but but to your point, right, it is it's a skill. It's a muscle to be built. And oftentimes, that means that we we I mean, I'm gonna use myself as a parent, but anybody across leadership has to be able to try and do. You'd said earlier, they're kinda sky's the limit right now. And if we're not trying, then nothing changes. So we almost have to go into a mode of try and be okay to fail so that we can come back to correct application, listen to our employees, and craft the way that this training communication goes forward in the most effective way possible. I'm curious to know if that I love that can I interject with a little Please? I think, just to carry out the metaphor that you started, I I was actually just talking to a a child psychologist that was saying that, like, giving folks that, like, say and choice, like, does extend to kids in the same way. And they were like instead of being like, you need to get in the car or, like, even like, do you wanna get in the car? Like, if you need the kid to get in the car, saying like, hey. Do you wanna skip to the car or do you wanna walk backwards to the car? Like, tell me. Like, think about how much more fun that is and, like, you're still getting what you need. They're gonna get to the car. Yes. So if you're giving them that choice, and I think people do not realize, like, how patronizing we are to deskless workers because they never get that choice. They never get to, like, be a part of that journey. Even if we know the destination we need them to get to, like, you gotta learn this. Like, are we giving them that kind of stay in that journey? So the kid might Well, the time the kid I mean, your your example of introducing something like an AI agent or a or a streamlined process, and it not being this is what we're doing. But to the employee, what does this help free up for you? How does this make your life easier, better, more streamlined, whatever? But it is an avenue to being able to said, I'm let's say, I'm trying to accomplish a need here with you that's in your maximum benefit, but what is it going to do for you? Let's have conviction both ways here. Yes. It's interesting because we so a big part of my research, that's why I was in academia for a while and then, have now been running a company called Anthill for, about six years. So actually building the solutions in the space. So I've seen kinda working with deskless workers on both of those sides. And when we were doing, the research, we did we did this big study where we were like like, how do people actually react to these automating technologies like AI? Like, how does it actually feel as a worker? And what's the job security and the the, like, effective well-being of workers that have interacted with it? And there was a shocking result in this study that's also, like it's shocking and it's, like, obvious at the same time, which I think a lot of these things are whereas, basically, like, how a leader talked about these technologies and how it would impact the worker, change the job security of that worker, and if they wanted to, like, stay at the company. So, like, if you had a leader who was like, this is gonna be, like, buzzword, buzzword, buzzword, super automating, blah blah blah, like, super fancy, like, be afraid. Like, people hated it. They would pretend to use it, but still do the other process they're doing to actually hurt production. They would, like, start looking for other jobs. They'd report they weren't secure in their job. If the leader was like, hey. We got this technology. It's not gonna do everything because nothing does, but it's gonna do this thing really well. That's a part of what you do today. And so but here's, like, the part of what you do today that we want you focusing on. Here's why, like, we think that's, like, really great. What do you think about that? What else do you think this frees you up to do? What would you like to learn to give more to this organization? Here's some things we actually need folks to fill. Does any of that interest you? Like, having that kind of conversation, people would be, like, adopting the technology a lot more. They'd be like, I wanna stay here forever. They'd be, like, super excited. It was such a different I end up just, like, how we talk to these technologies. And there's so much technology investment going right now that I think folks have to realize that, like, this is the moment to really get that, like, buy in from your worker on the training and the opportunity because they are gonna have so many more ideas than you on what this even frees them up to do. Yes. Yes. Now I think there's a point there, right, of everybody listening is going to hear that and say, well, that's where I wanna get to. I want employees to say I'm invested. I wanna stay here. You're doing right for me. But I think a lot of people are are are almost held back in the in the issue of, let's define how. I mean, how do I even get there? So maybe you could help prescribe some ways for us on how companies could make things like training and communication more inclusive for the workforce. How do we do that? And maybe we'll start there, and then maybe I have a bit of a curve ball to throw in to see if it mixes up the answer a little bit. Yeah. So I think the first one is, like, meeting people where they are, like, removing barriers. Like, so if you are provisioning laptops to folks, if you aren't provisioning licenses and things, like, what way can you open up for communication? Even if you're not sending them things, like, is there a way like, what we're big fans of even text message. Like, if folks don't have after things, like, is there a way they can text you questions at at a lawyer? Like, we're big believers in that. Like, whatever means necessary to open up that two way relationship with workers, I think that's, like, foundational. If you don't do that, at least go ask them. Just go say, like, hey. We want to have a two way conversation with you. How would you like to get in contact with us, it seems like? How would you like that door to be open? Like, just do that if nothing else. If you've done that, I think the next most important thing to actually practically implement this is real talk on the why. So, hey, we're gonna bring you all into this room for a really boring OSHA training right now. We have to do this. It's important. And we're gonna, as much as possible, make sure that when we train you, it's more exciting than this. But this one is a check the box, and that's why we're doing it. And, like, so come along for this journey. Like, that honesty goes so far. Like, if it's gonna be a boring training, say that. Now also saying, hey. We're trying to make training less boring. Maybe you're working with Anthill. Maybe you're working with Echo360. Maybe you're doing something in investing. Tell them, hey. We're making these investments because we want this to be a part of, like, really, like, your experience here. Like, we want you to feel like you're equipped with, like, the tools you need. Like, this is why we're doing this. Like, giving the why of those investments when you're when you are doing more. I think that the in the flow of work solutions, like, there's so many more kind of approaches that today. It can be as simple as, like, I know when we're working with companies, it's like, hey. Let's, like, take what you maybe would have done a training around and just, like, upload that into an AI agent and basically make that they can ask questions of that. Whatever, like, version of that you're doing, I think just being really clear of, like, hey. We want you to have a safe way to, like, have that experiential learning. Like, we want you to be able to learn on the job. Like, giving them basically like, give them behind the high behind the scenes look of why you're doing what you're doing or ask them. Even if you're not doing it yet, ask them, hey. We wanna be better at training. We want you to feel, like, whether you're staying here long term or you're going somewhere else, like, this that anyone that worked here is, like, they, like, they learned and they, like, really are, like, the best of their field. Like, this is a great place to, like, learn and be a better worker. Like, how do you want us to do that? Like, so either asking that question or, like, giving the why if you are making those investments, I think, is a really big part of it. And you're not you don't have to be perfect. There's an organization we work with where they, like, they weren't able to make a lot of investments at that point. They were, like, at the very beginning steps, and there was an our HR leader that was just, like, taking the materials and going on Google Translate and writing out the different languages on the different whiteboards because she knew folks would appreciate having it in their preferred language. Like like, showing that effort, though, and, like, helping people understand that, like, we care about getting this right, I think, is the biggest part of the how. Yeah. And you you beat me to the curve ball. I thought I was gonna be able to come in here with some variable, but the question being, if we introduce variables like languages or different shifts, roles and responsibilities, I was gonna ask, you know, does that change the narrative or does it reinforce the the the expression you've just had? And I think that it did that. It's it almost just reinforces the need to be upfront, be proactive, and consider the communication to make sure that it really is impactful for everyone and that those voices, those individuals, those employees are heard and considered in the decision making process. Yeah. It's so the language one I'm obsessed with because my big thing is, like, everyone at at our team at Anthill, we've we've always like, in our research and the work with companies, we're always like, how do we make sure there's just, like, fewer things that just make this unnecessarily hard? Like, there's just so many barriers for deskless workers. I mean, especially if you're, like, you're dealing with child care and public transportation and you're you're living paycheck to paycheck. Like, there's a lot of barriers in some of these jobs. It's just unnecessarily hard. Are there low hanging fruit ways so we can just make it a little easier? And we talk about, like, barrier removal all the time. One massive barrier is language. And we talk to employers all the time that are like, everybody here speaks English. It's a requirement of the job. We're like, cool. That's great. Is that the language they're gonna learn most effectively in, though, if at home they speak Spanish or if at home they speak French or if at home they are speaking any number of languages? Like, is that gonna make them most successful? Is that gonna even help you as an organization be most successful? Probably not. So we, as a default in everything we do, serve over 75 languages, and we automatically detect someone's language from conversation. We may need it on file or anything with your employer. It's just it's just the conversation you're having. There is so many great ways to service languages. Even if you're doing it like that HR leader that we talked about that, like, she didn't have any special technology. She was plugging it into Google Translate and writing in a whiteboard. It's like, do what you can and meet people where they are, remove the barriers, make it a little less hard. And one great way to do that is language. Over 20,000,000 folks in The United States do not speak English at home even though they speak English in the workplace. There's a lot of people that will stay at your organization longer if you meet them where they are in terms of language. It's phenomenal. What a statistic too. That's incredible to think about the impact of what a little bit of extra effort can do there, especially with the technology that it's our at our disposal to be able to help in that regard. It doesn't require just a simple Google Translate. Right? But there are so there's so much there in order to make an impact that would be so lasting for that that employee and the workforce and all. Mhmm. For sure. Thinking about thinking about technology, maybe I'm shifting a little bit here, but thinking about the technologies at our disposal. You've said a couple of times now. Right? We don't wanna get into a method where training is simply check the box. Though that has to happen, we have to have the OSHA training. We have to go through these other processes. But that doesn't always build skill at the end of the day. It's required, but we need to be, especially in the world that we're in today, a part of a skills economy, and we need to be improving, upskilling, and helping our employee base to feel valued whether they're with us or moving on in in what could be unfortunate, but also very positive for a lot of people. So I'm in a world specifically around deliberate practice and purposeful feedback always, thinking about ways to upskill. So tell me a little bit how deliberate practice and opportunities for purposeful feedback could really help the desk deskless workforce in gaining confidence and competency in the jobs that they're performing. Yeah. I love both of those, concept. I actually would love to just hear you do a whole hour on that that topic. That'd be so fun to hear. Hopefully, maybe next webinar. But I think that those are two things that are much easier to do if you have that tight manager and team relationship. Right? So if I'm a knowledge worker and my manager, I'm, like, interacting all the time, maybe we have, like, a check-in every day, maybe we have a check-in once a week. Like, there's a lot of natural support to get that, like, feedback especially all the time. A lot of deskless contact, contacts, you don't actually have a manager relationship as a typical deskless worker. It's more of a, like, supervisor to, like, very large population relationship. It's a different dynamic. So think first, it's important to, like, recognize that. There's some exceptions to that in, like, health care education, but a lot of times we're thinking, like, manufacturing, supply chain, distribution, agriculture. Like, in most of those, you're talking, like, one supervisor with, like, way too many people reporting into them. They don't even maybe know everyone's name. It's like a really kind of big scale challenge. So how do we actually provide that kind of feedback at scale? I think that's where technology is an incredible tool. Like, I think, again, AI gives us a really great kind of toolkit to, like, personalize that feedback and experience. I think it's really good to use tools like AI to surface when a human can then provide that. Like, maybe I'm a supervisor. It's tough for me to, like, know everyone's name or when they did something or when they're learning something. But can I have that surface to me so that I can give that personal touch of, like, hey? Oh, this help prompt me that I need to go tell this worker that they did something great or, like, that they're, like, learning something really great here. So So I think realizing that, like, it's not gonna be natural in that dustless context, we're gonna need to create tools and systems to support that feedback. We can't just assume it's gonna happen through natural relationship. It's just the scale doesn't support it. Yeah. And then that deliberate this, I think that, like, it is just so there is so much opportunity for learning in the work folks are doing, and I always talked about in in the flow work a lot. But, like, when you're at the machine, when you're in the field doing the installation, when you're on the environmental services team cleaning a building, like, how do we find little touch points for that learning in everything we do? So maybe our plan initially was, okay. We're gonna have this, like, quality control training for environmental services team quarterly. Well, is there a way to actually have some, like, intro version of that, but then take little bite sized pieces that are kind of a check-in point when they check-in on a new building instead and giving them those kind of, like those pieces that they can then apply, like, right then. Or the other way we've talked about is, like, kind of like a check on my work. So maybe I'm at a machine and I try something, and I could get that kind of, like, real time feedback on my my performance with that of, like, hey. Here's, like, what you did. Here's what could help you next time. Like, having that kind of partner, companion in in the flow of work as well. So I think there's lots of creative ideas that are often technology enabled because of the scale that makes it hard to do. One thing I love to tell, folks that are, like, wrestling with this and what it looks like in their organization is be like, great. If you did know everybody personally, you had, like, five direct reports and you were really focused on their training, what are some of the things you would do? And just, like, describe those. Forget technology. It's like describe the behaviors you would do, and then say, great. Is there a way technology could help us do that at scale and not the other way? I think a lot of times we're like, oh, could technology solve this problem? Well, first, like, well, what are we even trying to do? Take technology out of it. What would that look like? What would good look like? And then say, great. What are the tools that could help me do this at scale? Definitely. I mean, I I even was gonna ask you a question about AI, but I don't even think there's a need for it because you nailed the point of AI really does have to be a use of appropriate AI tools for appropriate AI outcomes. It is an accelerant to support faster, better, anything that way technology outcome, but it has to be owned with a personal touch. It has to have somebody behind it that's not just the machine. So I love that distinction of being able to support the work, but ensuring that we are personally giving our touch there with our employee base. Now being conscious of time, we have one minute left, and so I I we have a we could go another two hours, you and I, back and forth together, which is phenomenal. We'll have to schedule another one. But maybe just with the last thirty five seconds that we've got or so, tell me what, from this scope, really excites you most about the future of training and development for this workforce. Yeah. I think what excites me most is that it's, like, not optional. I think, like, before, maybe companies would be like, we're being really good people investing in our deskless workers. It is not optional anymore. Like, if your industry, if your organization relies on deskless workers at all, you have to invest and you have to invest now because you have to be an employer of choice for these folks or you will not be able to run your operation because there are not enough folks for these jobs. Like, the math is not mathing. You need these deskless workers. You need to invest in them. You need to have a well trained, like, happy, retained workforce, or you are not you are not going to succeed. So this is, like, high stakes. The time is now. You have to invest in them. And I love that because I think the work that deskless workers do is so valuable. I mean, if you think during the pandemic, a lot of us were, like, working at home. A lot of people thought, oh, everybody's working at home. No. Most people globally were not. They were out keeping the world running. These workers do such critical things, and I'm so glad that we're at a kinda juncture in society where we have to value them more. And I think we're seeing that in c suites all over the country that folks are saying, well, wait a minute. What are we doing for our deskless workers? So I think it's a really exciting time. But I also think if you're just thinking about this as a leader, like, you're late to the party, you gotta you gotta get on it. Like, this is a a workforce that you can't afford to not invest in. Yeah. Folks, folks that are listening, if you can't feel a bit of passion behind this, I don't know what you've been listening to in the last forty five minutes, but this is, number one, been phenomenal. This is absolutely incredible. We appreciate you so much for being here. But we do and we preserve some time for q and a, and I know that I have some questions here. People that are that are just salivating to hear from you on a couple of other things. Part of this as well, the very first one that I'm seeing, I love because you hear from me a lot of just the positive reinforcement. What should we do? How do we go forward? But the very first question that's here kinda tries to take a peek at the ugly a little bit, which I think is great to learn from. So we have a question in the chat from one of our listeners asking, what's the most common pitfall that you're seeing right now with organizations who roll out new frontline training programs? Right? The testing, the failures, some of those things. Where are we failing or what's the biggest pitfall there and how can we overcome that? Yeah. So I was talking to a leader of a manufacturing organization last week, and I was asking, like, how something was going because they had made some investments around training. And they are like, you know, we we ran into this issue, which is that we, actually provisioned kinda tablets to folks, and they would have to set up accounts kinda through the IT at the company, and they'd have to log in and all of that. Well, they realized that they were having folks do these trainings about once a month. But the way the rules were set up in that broader corporate environment was that if you hadn't logged in in twenty one days, your account got shut down, which totally makes sense if you're a desk worker. Like, if I wasn't logging in in twenty one days, yeah, it's like something has happened. But for the deskless workers, that totally didn't make sense. Like, they didn't need to be doing this more more often than that. So what happened is everybody logged in for the first training, and then their accounts got deleted. And then it was so much rather than work to try to get them stood back up, then nobody engaged in the program. So this is where I think these things go wrong is you have to take a step back and go everything we've assumed from a technology perspective, like compliance, all these things. We've made assumptions around what it's like to be a desk worker. We have to think from the bottom up what is different about being a deskless worker. Do we need to challenge our IT department on a policy like that? Like, do we need to do some things differently to make this work? And don't assume what's worked for desk workers is gonna work for desk because it's a really different way of working. It's a really different way of interacting with technology. And so actually think about what are those things that are gonna make this really work and what I need to push back on in my organization. That wasn't the training leader's fault. That was, like, an IT policy, and IT wasn't trying to get it wrong. They were just going with the policy that worked for years. Like, thinking through some of those pieces, you can make big investments that you get tripped up on in silly ways like a policy in IT. Definitely. Oh my gosh. Yes. And the step back, the consideration, listening to the voice is more important now than ever, especially in that regard. Now I have another question signed up here. Full invitation for anyone that is, is attending and listening. Please put your questions inside of the q and a. This has been exceptional thus far. We have one other one that I've had here and then maybe a couple others that have just sparked in my mind if we still have a couple of minutes if no one else puts it inside of the QA. But in the q and a, I also have another question talking about, maybe just experience. Are there industries that are streamlining the certification process and programs of Desmos training right now? Do you know of any what are some good examples of that? Yeah. It's interesting because one of the industries you'd think would be the slowest has actually embraced this more, which is health care. There are some really interesting innovations happening with kind of in the flow of work training and kind of even simulations and all of that with health care in particular. I think that that's a challenge then too. If you're in another industry and you're like, oh, it's too hard to do this. Well, if health care is doing it with all the regulation they face, you can do it too. So there are examples. I think though I think that it's important though to also be realistic and to just be transparent with the workforce of, like, hey. Our goal is that you are, like, so well equipped, so effective. Like, we wanna help you. Like, as we layer in technology, we wanna help you do, like, the most important part of this work. Like, we wanna help you with, like, this upscaling process, all of that. To get there, though, we do have some boxes to check. Like, we have some of these rules we have to follow. So we're gonna do those, and we'll just be clear with you. I'm like, hey. This is something we're gonna need to kind of do this way because we have to have that. We have to follow those regulations. We have those boxes to check, and here's where we get to experiment more. Like, bringing folks in on that kind of conversation and journey is what I've seen folks do really well. Understanding, like, where you can create more of that kind of experiential piece and where you need to kind of be a little bit more traditional. And that's okay. Like, it doesn't you don't have to go from, like, zero to a 100. Layering in just a little bit can make a difference. Yeah. And we don't even we don't want cookie cutter trainings either. We don't want it to reflect everybody else's work. It still has to reflect the, you know, the value proposition and the vision of these different companies and what they're trying to accomplish. So it's okay to take the variable a little bit and be different as long as we're being effective and as long as we're considering those values and our people and things that way. I love that topic. That's fantastic. Maybe if we piggyback a little bit on that, what about you said the health care industry obviously is is doing well in that. What other industries maybe are on the cusp of doing something that way that you've seen from your experience? And are there suggestions on how those industries could catapult themselves into being truly effective when it comes to deskless training? Yeah. I think it's interesting because we've seen, we've seen certain industries, like, I would say, like, supply chain that's invested heavily in technology, but not necessarily to support the worker. And, there's been something that we've seen consistently called the capitalization effect. You can read about it if you don't believe me. But, basically, it's held for a long time that the more you invest in automating technologies to replace workers, the more workers you end up needing, in an operation. And it's it's it sounds wrong. It has consistently been true. Typically, what happens is you create certain efficiencies, but then also you create other inefficiencies, and you create more opportunities in your business where you actually need to reinvest. So, typically, like, the idea of, like, oh, we can buy technology, replace humans, it hasn't actually worked in practice. Read about the capitalization. In fact, you could have a whole webinar just on that. It's very interesting. So given that, though, supply chain, distribution centers, fulfillment centers, warehousing, that is an area where there's been this kind of investment to try to automate a lot of processes. So that's, an industry that's kind of worked that muscle of thinking about deploying technologies, and they've actually seen the gaps of where they really need people. So that's been a really interesting industry that's kind of embracing now these more augmenting technologies that really support the worker. And so I think there's a lot of interesting innovation happening there for that reason. Sometimes it's like sometimes actually harder to make change in a place that they haven't tried anything. I think the fact that they did the attempt and kind of saw the gaps is why that's an exciting one right now. Definitely. Now on that topic of of seeing information or being able to read up on things, maybe because I don't have anything else to do q and a. Where would you suggest that people go to start understanding what's been tried, how it's been tried, what things have changed, good information, where should people go to gather info? Yeah. So, someone who I really respect, his name is Steve Hunt. He has been kind of all over HR tech for many years. We actually have our teaching the same topic. He's he's, been a researcher I've admired for a long time, but also been in industry for a long time. He wrote a book called Talent Tectonics that I recommend to anyone leading a deskless workforce. He goes really, deep into kind of what's actually changing across just some demographics, what some of the needs are, what some of the things that have been tried, what could be tried. So that's a book that I that I recommend. If if he listens to this, he'll be really happy that I plugged his book. Probably if I'm not compensated. But that's a book I really enjoy. I also think that it is just a good idea if you haven't done it, to just learn kind of the very basics of generative and agentic AI. Even if you're like, I'm not a technology person. I'm never gonna be a technology person. Understanding enough just the basics of what those technologies are and what they do so that you can then apply your subject matter expertise to assessing solutions, I think, is really valuable. And there's so many free ways to do it. I have talks on YouTube you can watch that give you, like, the five minute version. There's, like, for free. Like, there's lots of free classes, but I I think it's really critical to just understand the basics of, like, functionally what those technologies do because so many of the tools that you're gonna be assessing or applying will have a component of that in them. And you wanna know, like, how that's working so you can make really good decisions, but also figure out how to apply them better. Like, no technologist is gonna know how best to apply AI to training. Like, a training expert is gonna know Right. How to do that. So make sure you know enough that you can be in that conversation effectively. Those are two two things I would say. Incredible. Well, Muriel, I I don't know how to express the thanks that we have for you, especially our listener base for being a part of this. This has been such a phenomenal conversation, and I think that I know well, I'll just talk to our hierarchy. We need three more of these. That that was so great and so interactive. Thank you so much for all of your expertise, for your candor, for the the explanations. That was just insightful in every single way that it could be described. For everyone that is is here and listening or those that are listening onward, this is recorded. We've been capturing everything here, and we can email it out. So please feel free to reach out for any of the recording itself, to be able to re up, pass along, share with your colleagues, those who weren't able to attend today. This is far too valuable to just sit on the shelf. So please interact and ask for it so we can get it shared out that way. Maybe just a last thought from my side. I mean, we the Echo360 lives in the in the technology world. Talked a lot about technology here, but we've also talked about where technology still needs to be considered appropriately. And I think that's where my thought track is. I I'm hearing a lot of this conversation, and I I think that the world gets caught up a lot in looking at solutions that are, you know, feature for feature, what's going to, you know, give me the greatest value overall. And if we get caught up in a feature or a functionality world, we are not breaking past that surface level to consider the human behind it, to consider the people that we're serving. But there really is a deliberate need to think about purpose built technologies to meet the needs of the people that we're serving, to be able to create that personal communication, be able to create the upskilling, be able to drive true learning in the flow of work that doesn't just come at the point of features, helpful as they are. We have to break past feature functionality and dive to the the need, the pain point, and serve that level of granularity. You agree and and maybe find a lot to you there, doctor. I'm obsessed with this topic. So I actually for in a prior life, I was an adviser kind of on AI strategies for for companies, and I had this, like, four part scorecard that they had to, like, run anything through before they build or buy the technology. And it has nothing to do with technology. So if you're thinking, okay. I have this problem to solve. So the first part is, like, get really clear on the problem. Like, what really, really is the problem, and what does it impact? Second question is what information would I use to solve it? Like, what data would I need access to? What information? What are kinda, like, the tools of information that I would apply to solve that problem? Third is, like, if I had, like, unlimited kind of speed and scale, what are the things that I would do non technology wise just practically to solve that problem? And then fourth, who is actually interacting with this, and what do they think of what I've come up with? And, actually, what that ends up being is like, okay. What type of kinda AI agent are we deploying? What data do we need for that? What kind of semantics or kind of algorithmic controls do we need on that? And then, ultimately, what interface does somebody use? But if you start not thinking about it from technology and start through the lens of just, like, that problem and how we solve it, you are going to assess solutions so much differently. And and then when you're, you know, talking to someone maybe at Echo360 and you're you're, you know, you you're then gonna be so much more clear on what you need that thing to do, and then it doesn't really matter what the features are. You get down to are we actually going to move the needle on this problem that we wanna solve. So, yes, couldn't agree with that more. Always if anyone has questions on kind of that piece and how to assess solutions, always happy to chat about that because I am not a fan of technology for technology's sake. I think I'm a huge fan of solving real problems. Phenomenal. Ladies and gentlemen, my goodness, doctor Muriel Clauson Clauson, thank you so much for your time. For those of you that are here, thank you for being a part of this. Thanks for interacting with us. Thank you for the questions in the q and a. There is so much more to be surfaced here and we really hope that you continue to join us on on our webinar series to keep exploring topics like this. And if I have my way, exploring this topic multiple times as we go deeper into it together. I hope everybody has a wonderful rest of your your week. Enjoy the weekend. If it is as cool as it is for all of you like it is here in Utah right now, I hope you enjoy the transition to fall because it's absolutely phenomenal. Thank you all very much. Have a great time and, and please come and see us again on a future webinar series. Bye bye, everybody. Thank you.