The Overlooked Majority: Empowering Deskless Employees to Thrive – Tracie Sponenberg

[00:00:00] Nena Dimovska: Welcome back to People Pulse. Today, we are excited to speak with Tracie Sponenberg. Tracie has been in the HR world for over 30 years. Her story goes beyond fancy titles. It all started with those early jobs in bakeries and grocery stores, then onto UPS after college. That hands on experience gives her a real understanding of the daily grind. 

[00:00:28] She still has a deep passion for helping deskless workers who keep the world running, but often get overlooked. As a top HR advisor and a fractional CPO, she focuses on transforming workplaces and ensuring everyone, especially those who aren’t sitting at a desk all day, have a great experience. 

[00:00:50] She’s a big believer in using technology and AI to bridge the gap between people and business goals. In a previous interview, Tracie offered a simple message for young listeners. Embrace risk. Often the most exciting opportunities lie just outside your comfort zone. Today, we want to level up the conversation around deskless workers. 

[00:01:16] A staggering 80% of workers worldwide fall into this category. From warehouse technicians to hospitality staff who keep our world running smoothly, yet often receive less than 1% of software venture capital funding. Despite their role, deskless workers feel disconnected and undervalued compared to their desk bound counterparts. 

[00:01:42] In fact, 78% report feeling left out of communications and opportunities. Gallup’s 2023 State of the Global Workforce report revealed overall engagement rate of just 23%, which has a significant impact on productivity overall. Today, we will explore their challenges and the necessity innovation to empower and improve the employee experience for this vital segment of the workforce.​ Tracie, welcome.  

[00:02:17] Tracie Sponenberg: Thank you so much. I’m so happy to be here.  

[00:02:19] Nena Dimovska: So Tracie, we’ve seen a surge in digital tech across industries. How do you see this impacting the commitment of deskless workers to their jobs? Like, what are some specific ways of using technology to enhance their experience? 

[00:02:35] Tracie Sponenberg: You know, I think one of the largest problems and not just for deskless workers, certainly this population feels that more acutely is communication. And I think one of the great things that I’ve seen with all of this technology, and sometimes it could be technology overload, right? 

[00:02:51] But is the ability to communicate better and to communicate faster and to communicate quicker, right? And so that’s been huge. Absolutely huge. And we’ll continue to evolve over time. 

[00:03:06] Nena Dimovska: Could not agree more, could not agree more, especially seeing that it’s not just about the deskless workers, but it’s something that we all experience nowadays. Now, work flexibility is a major talking point, right? Does it translate equally well for deskless and admin workers? And drawing from your experience, what strategies have proven most successful when creating a flexible work environment for both groups? 

[00:03:33] Tracie Sponenberg: And I love that you brought this up because I know we talk a lot about return to office or return to work. And I really don’t love that because you talked about 80% of the population never left. And over the past several years came in every day, serve customers face to face and that’s the job. 

[00:03:50] So, I like when I talk about things like that, I’d like to talk about instead of hybrid, I’d like to talk about flexibility. Now, most workplaces that have deskless workers have a population of knowledge workers or people who are at a desk all day, who likely can have more flexibility, can work from home either all of the time or part of the time or have compressed schedules. 

[00:04:12] And so that gets a little bit trickier. So one of the things that I’ve done that helps is… you know it seems very simple but actually talk about it. You can’t assume that every deskless worker every person sitting at a desk wants the same thing or needs the same level of flexibility. So, what do people need? And then try your best to meet them where they’re at. You know, if somebody whose job it is, is taking boxes off of shelves and making sure they get to the customer that can’t be done remotely. But what could be done remotely is a schedule, maybe that fits that person better, compressed work week, you know…. PTO that’s not so rigid. That’s, you know, aligned with their schedule. Maybe shift swapping. There’s a lot of different things that can be done that are maybe unique to your workforce. But you have to really meet people where they’re at. And I think generally, some companies do good at that. But I think in general we don’t tend to.  

[00:05:12] Nena Dimovska: Thank you so much. That was indeed valuable because if I hear you, well, what you’re saying is transition to focus from just hybrid workforce, because the flexibility we need is not just in terms of where we do our jobs, but it’s so much more than that. And indeed, I do agree. It makes complete sense that nowadays the focus, it seems that it’s a bit too much in client over those who are, you know not on the deskless workers. Is there any specific example that, or a story that you might want to share? Something that a company did that you’re aware of and had success when it comes to flexibility for deskless workers? You mentioned better shift management. What else? 

[00:05:53] Tracie Sponenberg: Yeah. And I’ve read about this and I’ve talked to somebody and I’m forgetting the name of the app, but there are at least a couple that I’m aware of. Of apps that are made for either hospitality or other deskless workplaces where you can either bid for shifts, or you can swap shifts all within the app, which is technology, right? So that’s really cool. That’s a really cool concept, but personally, we didn’t have that at my company. We had my last company I was at, we had a facility or 60 of them, 60 different locations that were  

[00:06:27] Nena Dimovska: open from maybe 7 in the  

[00:06:29] Tracie Sponenberg: morning untill four in the afternoon. What we did do was number one, give the manager flexibility in the hours of the location. 

[00:06:38] So they had to meet the needs of the customer, but they could meet the needs of themselves and their team, as well. They also had flexibility because this wasn’t HR deciding, you know, you can have this, you can have this, you can have this, they also had the flexibility to, you know, make schedules for the team. 

[00:06:55] Long as again, the customer’s needs are getting met and the business was being met and there was, it was fair and equitable. Right? And so, you know, where are people going to go when they have an issue generally to that frontline manager? So, we made sure that they were well trained and well equipped to handle any sort of you know, I’m not talking about accommodations and those are certainly great, but any sort of flexibility needs. 

[00:07:19] And that was just, we did the right thing. Like you need this off. You need this time off every Wednesday so you can coach your kid’s team? Great. Do it. You know, you wanted to take piano lessons on a Tuesday morning at 8? We’ll work around that. So that was unusual, I think, but we had the ability to be very, very flexible that way.  

[00:07:43] Nena Dimovska: That’s amazing. I would also love to hear more on how it works at scale, but what, what resonates with me a lot is that I guess what you’re saying is communicate, communicate, communicate, you know, being aware that it’s not just about hybrid work, but it’s about flexibility. And if we might summarize also empowering the frontline managers to, you know, work within their microcultures, you know, knowing their people, knowing their customers. Amazing, that’s great advice. Now, also, I would add here that designing a strong benefits package is also crucial, right? Like a driver for all of this change. Now from your experience, what would you say are some of the must have ingredients when it comes to designing a benefits program that’s specifically designed for deskless workers? 

[00:08:31] Or, are there any elements that you would advise that we should avoid when designing one? 

[00:08:38] Tracie Sponenberg: Yeah, I don’t love to over generalize, but I will tell you what I think has worked for deskless workers that I’ve worked with before. So, the 1st thing is, benefits that are fair across the board. So, you know, I have not in companies worked with, and I know there are some companies that have, you know, executives pay less for their health benefits than deskless workers. 

[00:08:58] If anything, it should be the opposite. Right? And so, those health benefits are critical and they have to be affordable. And that’s something at my last company, we worked… for years and years and years to really get those costs down, because if you’re making a, you know, a wage, that’s more at the entry level and a large percentage of that, it’s going to health insurance benefits. 

[00:09:23] You’re not going to take those health insurance benefits. So, having something that’s affordable that the cost share of the company is large enough. So that it makes sense for your workers is really, really crucial. People generally seem to really like dental insurance. That’s pretty low cost, but dental and vision and offering that… and these are really pretty basic things, but then we get it specifically to deskless workers. Things that have been really popular are things like on demand pay. So it’s particularly if you work in a location that pays maybe biweekly, you know, earned wage access, I think is the name now, but somebody who can work a day tap into that money the next day, and they’ll get less than that, that biweekly check, but maybe they need it that next day for a bill. 

[00:10:11] So that’s been very, very, very popular. Things like supplemental coverage for accident insurance, cancer care, et cetera. That’s been really, really, really popular too. And, you know, just the, and this isn’t necessarily a benefit, but something that I think I know in my career, I haven’t always been good at, but making sure that the deskless workers have a career path if they want one. So, making sure that they can clearly see, I can go from here to anywhere or this is what I need to do. These are the skills that I need to gain as I move forward.  

[00:10:48] Nena Dimovska: Amazing advice. Thank you so much. Just one more question. You said career paths. If they want one. What’s your way of identifying whether people want one? When we’re talking, you know, large number of deskless workers in a company. Should it be process based identification or should we empower again the frontline managers? 

[00:11:10] What’s your approach? 

[00:11:12] Tracie Sponenberg: Probably a little bit of both. And it depends on the organization. And I say, if they want one, and that’s not exclusive to deskless workers. I think we tend to assume that everybody wants to move up that proverbial corporate ladder, right? And some people want to come in and, you know, work in customer service for their entire career, want to come in and work in the warehouse for their entire career. And we shouldn’t try to persuade them. Otherwise, if that’s really what they want to do, and companies need both kinds of people, right? You need people who want to trace up and you need people that want to come in and just do a really great job at their day to day, punch in at 9, punch out at 5 and do that for their career. 

[00:11:53] So I think it’s really important to balance those and it’s a mix of empowering the managers to have those conversations and having a process so that people feel like they can be heard.  

[00:12:04] Nena Dimovska: Thank you. Thank you for that. Yeah, I guess it’s safe to say that it depends on the talent density that you want within the organization or a certain segment to the organization. But while we’re at talent density, I think we can say that retention of top talent is a concern for many, many companies. Why would you say that it’s important to, or is it important to prioritize it for deskless workers? 

[00:12:30] And what would you say is an effective strategy for reducing turnover for this segment of the workforce? 

[00:12:39] Tracie Sponenberg: You know, I think it’s important for everyone, but traditionally, the segment of the workforce tends to have a higher turnover and for a lot of different reasons. And I think whenever I talk to clients or potential clients, that turnover or that retention is one of the top three business concerns. 

[00:12:58] I’m not talking about HR concerns. I’m talking about business concerns. If you’re in a rural area, say. You will go through that population of people who want to work for you over a period of time, if you don’t fix that problem. And, and it is fixable. And there’ll always be turnover and some turnover is good turnover. But I think, you know, it’s particularly in this population, it’s really important to preserve some level of retention because these folks are your future leaders. You know, really, this is an, an, area of the population organization that we don’t always think of having leadership potential. And that’s a terrible shame. My last company, we had a large central, what we called a central distribution, large distribution facility. And we worked really hard on the people team to make sure that everyone felt seen and heard and valued and that they felt like they could have a path forward. Because that particular team, even though they were serving every one of the locations every day felt a little bit disconnected from everyone. 

[00:14:09] So, it’s really was great to see somebody move from there to what we called central services or the corporate team. But there’s lots of reasons, but that’s one of the big reasons that we don’t talk about enough.  

[00:14:21] Nena Dimovska: Thank you for raising that. So you’ve mentioned retention and this feeling of disconnect as let’s say some of the top challenges that the deskless workers encounter into today’s world. So from an HR perspective, can you perhaps share what approach have you found successful in overcoming these challenges? 

[00:14:40] So something that worked, again, I assume it’s not something that can be generalized, but maybe from your experience, something that has worked. 

[00:14:49] Tracie Sponenberg: You know, I mentioned this a couple of times and I’ll keep mentioning it. And it’s super simple and there’s no secret formula or secret recipe and every company’s different. But I’ve seen this not happen a lot. So when it does happen, it’s really important. Just actually listening if you’re a new HR leader, doing a listening tour and listening, not just to your managers, but to folks at all levels. And even more than that, getting the C suite involved in, on the ground and in and talking to people. So one of the best things about my former company, and I talk about them a lot because I was there for 9 years and I just left a few months ago. So that’s my most recent experience aside from my clients, right? And it had a great culture and it had a very large justice workforce. And one of the best things about the company and universally, almost everybody would say this was: the CEO spent, I would say 50% of his time out on the road talking to our own people. So, he would walk into a facility know everybody’s name. 

[00:16:01] I’m sure he practiced ahead of time.  

[00:16:02] He knew everybody’s name. Wow. Asked about family, asked about, you know, how they were doing you know, made phone calls if somebody was sick. And this is a company with 800 people at one point, right? So this wasn’t tiny. This is not scalable to 20.000 people, but this wasn’t a tiny company. 

[00:16:20] This is a solid midsize company. And that, you can do that even if you’re a CEO of a very large company and the power of people feeling like the CEO actually cared is transformative, to every part of the organization.  

[00:16:37] Nena Dimovska: Wow. That’s an amazing story. 50% of the CEO’s time about dedicating to listening to people. I love that. That’s amazing. Now, what interests me here is and perhaps you can relate that sometimes it’s also about what happens after those conversations, right? So it’s not just about listening, but how you act on it. 

[00:17:01] Can you maybe share a bit more how, how did your previous company designed you know, action plan or modify the strategy based on having the CEO’s foot on the ground and listening and talking to people. 

[00:17:16] Tracie Sponenberg: Yeah, so 1 example, we call these town halls. They weren’t town halls in the traditional sense, but usually twice a month the CEO and I, as the Chief People Officer and several other executives would travel to different locations around the company. And we’d shut down a little bit early, pay people for being there and bring in dinner and you know, we’d wrap up. We go from, say, 4 to 6, right? And then wrap up by 6, so they can get home and spend time with their families. And it was a kind of a no holds barred conversation. It was a just ask anything. I’ll explain anything. I’ll share anything that I can. And people did, you know, we first started doing them when I first started. 

[00:18:03] It was in place before, but, like, they just happened to kick off when I first started. And I think the first couple we did people were a little bit more hesitant to share. But as we kept going, people did share and did share some incredible stories. And we learned some great background from past jobs or great ideas. 

[00:18:22] And so what would happen is: the manager, the regional director of that region would take notes. Those notes would then get circulated to the entire executive team and the entire leadership team, which is about 40 people at one time and with areas highlighted that required action. So, we were required within a reasonable amount of time to follow up with that person to potentially at least investigate an idea. And though, we didn’t measure that particularly a lot of great ideas came from those town halls.  

[00:18:52] Nena Dimovska: That’s really amazing and great, great story. You’ve mentioned that communication is key and your previous company and the town halls are a great example of how you’ve breaking the barriers, right? Between management and the deskless employees. But if we’re being realistic, it’s not often the case. 

[00:19:14] I think it’s safe to say that we have… as you said yourself, communication challenges. So one approach is obviously the one that you’ve mentioned, how you’ve solved it at your previous company. Maybe perhaps you can share another approach on how you can bridge this gap. So we’re talking about the disconnect between the leadership level and the deskless employees. 

[00:19:38] How would you advise company to start bridging this gap? 

[00:19:44] Tracie Sponenberg: And it wasn’t perfect at that company either. Right. And I think communication is there’s always room for improvement, always room for improvement. But yes, with the executives, that’s important, but it really starts as most everything does with the managers, with the frontline managers who tend to be overburdened, but the most under resourced part of the population. 

[00:20:06] So we had at my last company, something we call the truck driver test. So the folks that were most connected to our customers, because they were delivering to job sites every day, but least connected to the organization, because they were literally gone all day. And so if we communicated an initiative and, you know, we could go and talk to one of our truck drivers and the truck driver understand what that was, then we felt like the communication was a success. 

[00:20:34] Right? And every company’s a little bit different. And so in companies where they have deskless workers on Slack you know, Slack is a great communication tool and there are other, you know digital communication tools. 

[00:20:46] We started using in the last couple of years… texting was enormously effective for communication and bridging that gap. 

[00:20:53] So, if it was something that our deskless worker population needed to know- texting, and then it just didn’t reach those who opted out or those who didn’t have the ability to read text, which wasn’t a whole lot. So that was really, really effective.  

[00:21:08] Great. 

[00:21:08] And using other forms of technology is really effective too.  

[00:21:11] Nena Dimovska: Great. Amazing. Thank you. Thank you for that. Now we can agree that when it comes to deskless employees, and this is something that you briefly touched based upon talking about the medical insurance, we can say that safety is vital. You know, creating a safe work environment is critical. So what in your experience is an effective ingredient to design a workplace culture that prioritizes and that emphasizes this safety. 

[00:21:40] Tracie Sponenberg: I, especially with the deskless workforce, right? And my former company had folks that were on forklifts and lifting and certainly in, safety sensitive environments, and I think we’re going to circle back to a couple of themes, right? Open communication, open communication, making sure that people don’t have or there isn’t an environment that would breed fear of bringing up a concern that there’s that psychological safety where people, if they did have a concern could bring that forward. Those frontline managers, again, being critical, absolutely critical to this process. And then having really clear procedures and policies and what’s acceptable and what’s not and then enforcement of those policies. I’m not a rigid policy enforcer when it comes to handbooks, but when it comes to safety, if you’re required to have a safety vests on to go into a warehouse or to be clipped into a forklift that raises, you absolutely have to do that and follow through and discipline when appropriate.  

[00:22:44] Nena Dimovska: True, true. And you mentioned that… you know, bringing forward safety concerns is something that if you, of course, if people have the psychological safety to bring forward those safety concern is very important. I like that because it emphasizes the bottom up communication. 

[00:23:03] Maybe perhaps you can give an advice or two on how we can boost this and how we can motivate people to you know, be comfortable to raise their concerns 

[00:23:15] Tracie Sponenberg: I think it starts with creating that environment and that starts with the manager and bottom up approach doesn’t happen overnight. We had at my last company an inverted hierarchy. So those of us in the executive team worked for everybody else, right. And so you know, that’s you can say that’s it’s great. The pay wasn’t quite equal, but so it’s not exactly inverted, but it was truly, you know, we worked for everybody else. Right? And so. When your executive team does not have that mindset, that’s almost impossible to achieve, when you’re your CEO and your executive team does have that mindset, then you can’t create that safety. 

[00:23:59] And again, that frontline manager, that location manager, whoever that is, is critical to that, because that deskless worker may not- may see the CEO in my last company, but that’s extremely rare. But may not have that, that frontline manager may be the top level. And I use that term in quotes. But that top level person, you know, that they know, and so empowering those managers to empower their own people is absolutely critical in all things.  

[00:24:30] Thank you. Thank you very much for the insightful conversation, Tracie. It was a real pleasure having you here.  

[00:24:36] Tracie Sponenberg: It was wonderful.  

[00:24:38] Nena Dimovska: The perspective that you shared was indeed, valuable you know especially about the important role that the deskless workers play in our global workforce. 

[00:24:48] While we can agree that the challenges that they have are concerning, I guess that what we discussed about today highlights some of the exciting opportunities that companies have to innovate. And to our listeners thank you for tuning in. We have just unlocked another workplace heartbeat together. 

[00:25:08] Remember to use these practical takeaways, stay inspired and keep your workplace heartbeat strong. Don’t miss out on future insights, subscribe and get ready to power up your HR strategy. Thank you.