Redeapp recently published a case study entitled “Rethinking Critical Operational Infrastructure in the Age of COVID-19” – focused on trends, challenges, and technology in the Casinos & Gaming industry. This post is an excerpt from the full document, focusing on platforms. Download the full case study here.
In an age where 89% of working-age adults own a smartphone, companies have access to ready-made infrastructure through which they can connect with employees. With great power comes great responsibility, however, and there are just as many well-advertised pitfalls to this technology opportunity as there are benefits.
The challenges are two-fold.
1. Organizationally, companies will be trying to balance innovation and progress with compliance, legal risk, security, and wage and hour concerns. If platforms are not designed for both, then it will almost inevitably lead to internal stressors between departments and conflicting priorities.
2. Adoption needs to be driven by need rather than want. Social media platforms are not designed for practical work needs. Higher adoption is an indication that a need is being fulfilled, and benefits are derived from increased utilization.
The platform has to be private and secure, innovative yet compliant, and intelligent enough to automatically adapt to the ebb and flow of standard operations such as onboarding, shift changes, training, and personnel advancement. But above all, it has to match the needs and behaviors of the workforce it is intended to serve.
Hard Rock Sacramento Dashboard
Figure 5: Redeapp’s analytics dashboard reports on adoption rates and messaging effectiveness.
A recent article published in the Financial Times called out Slack as a “monumental distraction” along with other mobile platforms such as Facebook Workplace, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Google Chat, whose use can “splinter communications” and effectively make work more taxing. The reason? Platforms that are architected for desk-bound information workers rely on broad open channels, newsfeeds, and social media style communication in order to attract users.
This dependency on ‘viral’ messaging founded in social connectivity can create regular disruptions that distract rather than help. According to the Washington Post, researchers say it can take around 23 minutes to return to the task at hand after being interrupted. Over the course of a typical workday, this adds up to a significant loss of productivity. While companies may be able to more readily bear the brunt of lost productivity in the front office, the same effect applied to non-desk employees would be devastating to the bottom line. In practice, trying to copy and paste the success of social media in our personal lives over to the workplace is often ineffective and has an inconsequential or worse, negative, impact on the business.
According to the Financial Times article, “Some jobs require ceaseless communication. But most do not, meaning a lot of this activity either dents productivity or creates stressful extra work to make up for lost time.”.
Amongst the non-desk workforce, having a more tightly designed platform where a relevant signal can be found amongst the noise is key to real connection. Rather than dealing with a cacophony of sound, better to have controlled, standardized, culturally aligned messaging, tools, and workflows that simultaneously allow for innovation whilst meeting the needs of compliance.
Redeapp recently published a case study entitled “Rethinking Critical Operational Infrastructure in the Age of COVID-19” – focused on trends, challenges, and technology in the Casinos & Gaming industry. This post is an excerpt from the full document, focusing on platforms. Download the full case study here.
