Deskless workers: who they are and how to train them

 

Deskless workers are employees who spend most of their working day away from a desk and a computer. Training them starts with four practical decisions: how they get access, on what device, in which paid time and in what format.

Deskless workers are the employees who do not sit at a desk for most of their job: operators, drivers, store staff, kitchen teams, cleaners, field technicians. Emergence, a venture capital firm that has studied this group for years, estimates there are more than 2.7 billion of them, about 80% of workers worldwide.¹ It is an investor's global estimate rather than an official statistic, but it gives a sense of scale.

Training them is rarely a content problem. It is an access problem: most corporate training assumes a work email, a computer and a free hour, and many deskless workers have none of the three. In this article we look at who these workers are, what the European data says about their access to digital tools and the four decisions that determine whether a course actually reaches them.  

Who deskless workers are

Deskless workers are defined by where and how they work, not by their sector or their seniority. Three things usually apply:

• Their work is physical or on the move: on a line, in a store, in a vehicle, on a site or in a client's home.
• Their time is tied to a shift or a route: stopping has a direct cost, because someone has to cover the task.
• Their link to the company is thin: often no work email, no assigned computer and little contact with central teams.

A deskless company can still have plenty of desks. A retail group or a logistics operator has office teams too, which is why the same training plan can look fine from headquarters and never reach the people in stores or depots.  

How many deskless workers have digital access at work

Eurostat measures the share of people employed in European companies who have internet access for work. It is the closest official indicator of how far a digital course can travel, and the differences between sectors are large:  

  Source: Eurostat.² The figures include the office staff of each sector, so the real share among operational staff is likely to be lower. Even so, in hotels, restaurants and food plants, about half of the people employed across Europe do not have that access through work.

For training, that has a direct consequence: a course sent by email to "all staff" reaches the first rows of this table and misses part of the last ones. Nobody declines it. It simply never arrives, and the completion report shows them as pending.  

Four decisions for training deskless workers

We see these four decisions determine whether training reaches deskless workers. They are best made before the course is built, not after the first completion report.  

Decision 1: How deskless workers will get access to the course

If people have no work email, an email invitation or a login tied to one will not work. The usual alternatives are a direct link or QR code shared by the team leader, a learning space people enter with a personal identifier, or the LMS they already use if they have one. Whichever you choose, test it with one real shift before rolling it out.  

Decision 2: Which device deskless workers will use

There are three realistic options, and many companies end up combining them:  

  None of them is right for every site. A food plant where phones stay in the locker needs a different answer from a delivery fleet.  

Decision 3: When deskless workers will do the training

Asking people to complete training at home, unpaid, is the fastest way to get low completion and a complaint. In the EU, mandatory health and safety training must take place during working hours.³

In practice, that means agreeing specific moments with operations: the start of a shift, a planned quiet period or a slot the team leader protects. If the time is not assigned, the course competes with the job and loses.  

Decision 4: What format suits deskless workers

Short modules work better than long sessions because they fit between tasks. Beyond length, the format has to match the conditions: subtitles and clear visuals if the site is noisy, audio for people who find it easier to listen than to read or watch, and the languages people actually speak.

The content should also look like their job. A module filmed or illustrated in an office, with office examples, tells a warehouse worker it was not made for them.  

What this looks like in practice

Take a hotel group that updates its cleaning chemical procedure. The first attempt goes out by email to all staff. Reception and management finish it in a week. Housekeeping, the team that handles the chemicals, barely appears in the report, because most of them have no work email and start their shift with a full list of rooms.

The second attempt changes the delivery, not the content: a link shared by the housekeeping supervisor, a ten-minute slot at the start of the morning shift, a shared tablet in the linen room and the course available in the three languages of the team. The record then shows who finished, by name and by hotel.

The work behind that second attempt, several language versions and delivery by team or by link, is what usually overwhelms a small training team. Platforms like Vidext prepare those short courses from the company's own procedures and deliver them by team, by link or inside the LMS, with audio courses as an option, while the training team approves each course before it goes out. For more on format, we go deeper in our guide to microlearning for a dispersed or intermittent workforce.  

Conclusion: deskless workers are reached by design, not by reminder

When deskless workers show up as pending in a completion report, the usual reaction is to send another reminder. It rarely helps, because the reminder uses the same channel that failed the first time.

What changes the result is deciding how each group gets access, on what device, in what time and in what format before the course goes out. For shifts with no trainer on site, see also how to train rotating shifts without classroom sessions. A course that nobody can open is not a training problem people will report to you. You have to go and look for it.  

Frequently asked questions

 

What is a deskless worker?

An employee who spends most of the working day away from a desk and a computer, such as a machine operator, driver, store associate, cook, cleaner or field technician. Emergence estimates there are more than 2.7 billion of them worldwide.¹  

What percentage of the workforce is deskless?

The most quoted figure is about 80% of workers worldwide, from the venture capital firm Emergence.¹ There is no official global statistic. In Europe, Eurostat's closest indicator shows that about 65% of people employed in companies with ten or more employees have internet access for work, with large differences between sectors.²  

How do you train employees who have no work email?

With a direct link or QR code shared by the team leader, a learning space they enter with a personal identifier, or an LMS they already use. Whichever you choose, the record should still identify each person, so you can see who completed the course.  

Can you ask deskless workers to use their personal phone for training?

It depends on company policy, on employment conditions and on whether people accept it, so it is worth agreeing it beforehand and offering an alternative such as a shared tablet. In the EU, mandatory health and safety training must take place during working hours, whichever device is used.³  

What is the difference between deskless and remote workers?

Remote workers are usually away from the office but still work on a computer, with email and online meetings. Deskless workers may be on company premises all day but without a computer or a work email. Training built for remote teams often assumes exactly the tools deskless workers do not have.  

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Sources

¹ Introducing "The State of Technology for the Deskless Workforce" - Emergence ² Use of computers and the internet by employees by NACE Rev. 2 activity (isoc_ci_cm_pn2), 2025 - Eurostat ³ Council Directive 89/391/EEC on the introduction of measures to encourage improvements in the safety and health of workers at work - EUR-Lex