Backing doinstruct

With all of the talk about home, hybrid or even ‘beach’ working, it’s easy to forget that 80% of our workforce have no choice over where they work. They must be present in a specific place at a specific time to perform their jobs. 

Think food processing, logistics, manufacturing, hospitality, construction. The workers that put food on our shelves, deliver our packages, and build our cities. These frontline workers often perform physically demanding, dangerous jobs; jobs that are regularly overlooked. 

Overlooked by many, but not by regulators. From food hygiene to workplace safety and beyond, there are a myriad of strict regulations governing workers in these industries. Regulations which often get updated several times a year and can be hard to keep track of. But if you don’t comply with them you get fined…a lot!

How have companies dealt with this to date? In large part, on-site with 5 Windows XP computers sitting at the back of a factory or in a training room showing a powerpoint presentation. New workers sit through the training and sign a printed form which they hand in at the start of their shift where it goes into a folder for future, manual auditing.

This process is bad enough in itself but the world is also changing fast. Developed countries are importing labor to cope with shortages in key industries so training in one language doesn’t cut it. Turnover of labor in these sectors is also rising so firms now have to train tens or hundreds of new joiners every month, on top of the re-training required for existing workers as new rules come into force.  

In short: the world needs a training product that is easy-to-use, simple to implement, with almost perfect adoption, offered in 16+ languages, and with content that can be changed on the fly for whatever shenanigans food controllers, construction supervisors or logistics unions come up with.

Meet: doinstruct 

CEO, Charlotte Rothert’s background in large scale farming operations helped her see firsthand how much of a difference good training can make to the success of these businesses, and also the limitations of existing training products. 

We’re excited to back Charlotte and her co-founders, Daniel Marinkovic, Thorsten Gross and Mona Feder not only because they’ve built an incredible product, which is already being used by more than 170 customers; but also because of the scale of their ambition and vision. From new verticals to new geographies to leveraging the potential of AI, we can’t wait to see where they take doinstruct.

• 80% of the global workforce are frontline workers but current training options are not fit for purpose. The most common approach is still to take the worker out of production, sit them in a classroom in front of a PC and view static content. Businesses are literally burning money with this approach.

• Frontline workers deserve a training product that has been built with their needs and behaviors front of mind. If their needs are met, shift leaders are happy. And if shift leaders are happy, business owners succeed. 

• Simplicity rules when it comes to meeting the needs of frontline workers. No barriers, automated, personalized in their own language, engaging and easy.

• ‘Meh’ adoption rates won’t cut it when it comes to compliance training. It’s too important. You can’t have food processing workers not fully trained in food hygiene rules. 100% is the new 50%.

• Ease of implementation is also critical for managers who are not digital natives themselves and otherwise have to contend with many real world problems. No implementation means no adoption which means no compliance which means heavy fines or worse.

• Only a team with direct experience and knowledge of this world and who truly speaks the language of their customers will win. That’s why we’re so excited to back doinstruct.