StaffHub app for Android, iOS connects workers' smartphones to Microsoft's cloud

Microsoft'south General Manager of Design, Research and Product Incubation, Jon Friedman, realized 650 1000000 smartphone-carrying frontline workers weren't continued to Microsoft'due south cloud. Then he did something about it.

Friedman, in an amusing even so informative and cocky-deprecating talk at Microsoft's Build 2022 developer conference, shared his many failures and few successes since joining Microsoft.

Through his struggles, Friedman realized many thriving businesses using Microsoft 365, the company'southward AI-connected cloud-based products and services, had wholly excluded depression-wage frontline workers from the benefits of Microsoft 365.

This exclusion was also a missed opportunity to bring these workers, who are also smartphone consumers, or dual users (a resource in their own right), into Microsoft'south always-expanding intelligent deject. Friedman saw an opportunity where Microsoft, "frontline" workers and the company'south business partners could all benefit by leveraging the ane tool even low-wage workers have: smartphones.

Microsoft 365 misses millions of frontline workers

Many companies using Microsoft 365 and other Microsoft tools reported to Friedman that their "deskless" employees had no use for the products Microsoft was designing for businesses. (Run into the above video.)

These workers include waiters, hospitality, structure, airline workers and more. A staggering 650 one thousand thousand employees belong to this class of workers inside large enterprises, Friedman said. In fact, they make up a larger portion of the workforce than employees that work at desks. Friedman admitted Microsoft had ignored this demographic.

This oversight was reflected in the reality that many companies using Microsoft's cut-border AI-driven Microsoft 365 to manage operations were also using bulletin boards littered with push pins and papers to manage schedules, acquire and complete tasks, and communicate with frontline workers. These were three areas Microsoft and frontline workers, who are likewise smartphone consumers, had the resource to address.

Friedman found that many frontline workers making around $10 an 60 minutes, or less, also owned $600 smartphones. He saw the pervasive nature of this tool as an opportunity. For example, Microsoft had previously supplied Microsoft 365 enterprise customers, like Starbucks, with an Function 365 that could be used in a kiosk where employees could check email.

Additionally, managers of diverse companies used Excel to compose schedules which were ultimately printed and pinned to a board that employees copied or photographed so they would know their schedules. Friedman realized a smartphone app could perform all of the scheduling, job completion, and advice functions that frontline workers had relied on those archaic tools to perform.

So he and his team created StaffHub.

StaffHub brings consumer's phones to the deject

StaffHub is bachelor on iOS and Android and connects frontline workers to the benefits Microsoft 365 affords the company'south enterprise customers. From Microsoft:

Microsoft StaffHub is a deject-based platform that slips piece of work (and the tools to manage it) into everyone'southward back pocket. With Microsoft StaffHub, first-line workers tin can view schedules, swap shifts, and request fourth dimension off. Managers tin create schedules, approve requests, and share data.

I manager reported that StaffHub saves her about a week's worth of time each month and said messaging is the most used function among workers.

StaffHub is yet some other span between Microsoft'due south cloud and the boilerplate smartphone consumer. And it is available to customers that take an Office 365 Enterprise F1, E1, E3, E5, or Instruction subscription plan, according to Microsoft.

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