For essential workers, messaging apps can often be indispensable. More than any other kind of employee, essential workers need a way to receive last-minute schedule changes, up-to-date operational statuses, and health-affecting news updates.
Companies oftentimes will prioritize safety and procedures for their essential employees. Peer-to-peer messaging can enhance these efforts and bring a more convenient layer on top of existing solutions.
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With these things in mind, below are five ways messaging apps can help keep your essential workers safe during the continuing COVID-19 pandemic.
Easier Training and Guidance
Time is of the essence, which is why essential workers are trained and thrown into their jobs as quickly as possible. Messaging apps can be an easy source of guidance when they encounter a problem on the job or need clarification from a higher-up. This is especially important when wrong decisions resulting from lack of training lead to injury, infection, or the spread of infection.
Faster Decision-Making
Unlike with email where getting an answer to a question can take a long time, you can get questions answered in a matter of seconds through instant messaging. Instant messaging can prove very helpful when timely decisions requiring outside input need to be made — especially those that could affect the health of your essential workers, or those around them. It’s also not like you’re limited to messaging one individual at a time; you can just as easily resolve a larger problem promptly through a group chat.
Pressing Notifications
Whether it’s an upcoming workshop or a more serious update, such as one that could affect the health of your essential workers, messaging apps deliver notifications much faster than other forms of communication. Plus, as a frontline worker with an on-call schedule, the quickness of instant messaging can really improve their work environment.
On-the-Fly Team Building
Essential workers barely have enough time to do their jobs, let alone build relationships with their coworkers. During those precious moments of rest, however, messaging apps can help essential workers get to know other members of their team in a passive way that doesn’t affect their job performance. This on-the-fly team building can help maintain your essential workers’ mental health by helping them not feel isolated on the job.
Convenient Activity Logging
Along the same lines as the point above, essential workers don’t always have the time to keep records of their hectic day-to-day schedules. However, sending off a quick message at the end of a workday takes a lot less time than sitting down at a computer, logging into a company’s time-keeping system, and logging their activity that way.
Even if daily update instant messages aren’t feasible, IMs sent and received within teams can serve as great indications of what happened on any given day.
True Benefits
Whereas messaging apps might be seen as time-wasters by some organizations, companies with essential workers know that messaging apps can in fact help maintain both physical and mental well-being, as well as promote productivity and on-the-fly team building.
