Question

Article ""The State of the Deskless Workforce” addresses logistics management labor concerns""

Quinyx, a global cloud-based, workforce management SAAS provider, recently released a report on “The State of the Deskless Workforce,” which addresses logistics management labor issues.

The report notes that nearly 30% of logistics workers think taking more than one consecutive sick day is a fireable offense. Furthermore, states the report, nearly 20 percent of logistics professionals came into work sick during the COVID-19 outbreak - risking the health of themselves, their colleagues and customers.

Acccording to Quinyx’s CEO, Erik Fjellborg, the survey was designed to ask deskless workers what businesses can do to support them, keep them happy and stay in their jobs longer.

“The findings allowed us to gauge how the workforce is evolving in light of new regulations, technologies and global challenges,” he adds.

In this exclusive interview with LM, Fjellborg expands on his observations:

The fact that a distinct need for flexibility and sick time exists across the deskless workforce was not particularly surprising, especially in the current climate, but certainly valuable in enforcing the notion that these are basic rights all deskless workers want and deserve.

Through our research, we found that workers are stressed about their schedules and experience an overwhelming lack of flexibility, causing 49 percent to miss out on major family and friend milestones.

On top of this, one in four would choose to have a flexible work schedule over making more money, and 31 percent left a job because their employer didn’t provide schedules in advance. Even ahead of this report, we supplied businesses with the needed tech to allow for schedule flexibility - and our research further enforced the need for continued reform when it comes to workplace needs.

In addition to flexibility, we were surprised to find that only 6 percent of logistics workers have paid sick time.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, we relied on the logistics industry to keep our society functioning. To find that during this time only 6 percent of workers had access to paid time off while being expected to continually serve and meet increasing demand was maddening, especially knowing this meant workers had to make the decision of coming in sick or not getting paid.

Within the logistics industry and across deskless workplaces, we should be striving to improve the employee experience, and a great place to start is by implementing paid sick leave and prioritizing workers’ physical and mental wellbeing first.

Summarize and describe importance of story. What are the implications for this story on the future? Each current event should be three robust paragraphs

Answer 1

The story talks about the logistics industry in particular. The article deals with the labor's mindset in the logistics industry on the purview of job security throwing light on how it depends on the number of sick leaves taken by them. 30% of them think that more than one sick leave can get them fired, and this has pushed closed to 20% of them to show up at work thereby risking their colleagues as well.

Quinyx's survey's agenda was to know from the workers themselves on what these businesses can do to support them and address their needs in these trying times. The evolution of workforce is drawn in from their answers and further improvements can be made to the same. Eric Fjellborg explains the narrative on why these 'deskless workers' deserve the basic rights on sickleaves and pushes for flexibility to accommodate the present conditions.

Shocking statistics reveal that close to 31% leave the job when the employer is not able to provide benefits of being flexible in the job, and 1 in 4 choose flexibility over increased wages.

Believe it or not, if the economy is still functioning to the extent we are witnessing, a great amount of credit goes to these deskless workers. They have kept the society running. You might ask how. Well, the groceries, medicines, etc which you had access to even during the lockdown was nothing but the concerted efforts from these logistics workers. And a majority of these people are not paid if they stay at home. These workers risk their lives so that many of us can stay home and not wander about in search of groceries and stuff

In the advent of this pandemic, the world is united (kinda) in fighting against the virus. And during this testing times, not everyone are in a position to stay at home. For instance take these logistics workers themselves. Neither they get sick leave nor the employers really carry about their physical and mental fitness. The story should inspire the employers to treat these workers equally and ensure they are fit enough to work in the first place. In simple, give weight to humanity rather than profits. This ought to continue until the world returns to normalcy and the health risks associated with the pandemic reduces significantly. With a lot of workers even get laid off, the logistics industry might feel shortage of workers. But that's a scenario which has minimal chance of occurrence. But if at all it happens, the economy will face a worse off situation much more than the present scenario

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