Supply Chain Comment
By Stephen Gerrard, Vice President of Marketing & Strategic Planning, Voxware, Inc.
September 22, 2011
Voice and the Diverse Workforce
To Stay Ahead of the Curve, Businesses Must Recognize How Diversity and Technology Interact
Workforce diversity is increasing. In order to stay ahead of the curve, businesses must recognize how diversity and technology interact. In the warehouse, technology is often tailored to the specifications of a generic user. This creates high probability of suboptimal worker performance. People are all different; to get the best out of them, your software must treat them as such.
Voice picking technology needs to adapt to the realities of the diverse workforce. If voice cannot accommodate a wide range of languages and skills, it will impede the productivity of workers who do not fit the average vanilla profile. To successfully manage diversity, voice needs certain underlying technological elements.
What aspects of voice allow you to get the most out of a diverse workforce, and why? Let’s consider the question by examining the two major dimensions of diversity.
Gerrard Says: |
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| If voice cannot accommodate a wide range of languages and skills, it will impede the productivity of workers who do not fit the average vanilla profile. |
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What Do You Say?
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Diverse Ethnic Backgrounds
Many warehouses are multilingual. At Voxware, we serve one warehouse that has four different languages spoken on the same shift. Language should never be a barrier to higher productivity, so workers need to be able to choose the language that they are most comfortable with. Voice systems must provide the capability of using a different language for each individual.
But voice technology needs to go beyond merely supporting different languages for prompts. Each voice user has his or her own speech pattern that needs to be specifically recognized so that they can work at optimal productivity levels. Even within the same language, diversity in dialects can cause problems if voice recognizers are not trained to individuals’ speech profile. Comprehending each worker is paramount—otherwise, consistent misrecognitions make the user repeat commands. This wastes time and frustrates the worker. Inaccuracy in voice recognition leads workers to distrust and potentially reject the technology; at worst, it could mean a failed project and lost ROI.
Robust recognizer software eliminates the problem. A “speaker-dependent” recognizer is trained to understand an individual worker’s unique way of speaking. When the worker is in action, the recognizer gets it right the first time, every time. The worker doesn’t have to waste time repeating commands or correcting them. “Speaker-independent” recognizers require no training up front; however, they are designed for a generic user and cannot accommodate a diverse workforce. The lack of integration between user and recognizer makes the picking process error-prone. In the end, a recognizer that allows you to skip training ends up costing more time and effort than a trained speaker-dependent recognizer.
Diverse Experience Levels
Varying experience levels are another dimension of diversity. Employee churn guarantees that there will always be a mix of skilled veterans and inexperienced trainees in the workforce. When turnover is high, supervisors feel as if all their time is spent training new workers instead of completing their other tasks. This is a major problem when temp workers are hired for the busy season. Managers can ill afford to dedicate time to training during the peak season, nor can they allocate extra time for workers to get up to standard performance levels. Oftentimes, managers end up accepting lower productivity than they should. The peak season needs to be when the workforce is at its best, not when management has to make compromises on productivity.
On the other end of the scale, top-level workers need to be given the tools to reach their maximum productivity potential. A picking system that ties all workers to the least common denominator holds back the best performers. Conversely, a system suited to experts will cause frustration for inexperienced pickers. Voice technology should empower every worker, regardless of ability. But how?
The solution is user-specific configurability. Well-crafted voice technology can unlock the full capability of your “superworkers” without encumbering new workers with a difficult system. But you need the right components in your software. One necessity is a “continuous recognizer.” Such a recognizer handles longer phrases, giving expert workers the ability to combine commands into a single statement, reducing the amount of prompts. Fewer prompts mean fewer delays and faster work. “Discrete recognizers” are optimized to understand short words like “ready,” “yes,” and “no,” which requires more interactions, frustrating experienced workers who already know what to say next.
While continuous recognition helps fast workers, new workers need technology that can help them finish their tasks without leaving their work area to seek instruction. Voice should have an in-context help feature that keeps pickers working and out of the supervisor’s office. This “manager-on-the-shoulder” allows the worker to use intuitive commands like “What do I say?” to get help when they need it. Such software allows managers to train workers in their native language, even if managers don’t speak that language. Temps and trainees do not have to waste time leaving their tasks to get assistance, and managers are left to do their job without interruption.
Final Thoughts
To be a productive warehouse, managers must address ethnic and experiential diversity. To be an exceptionally productive warehouse, managers need the tools to administrate diversity effectively. With the capabilities noted above, voice technology gives management the means to accommodate the entire spectrum of ethnic, lingual, and skill differentials. Doing voice the right way will make diversity work for you—and swell your ROI.
For more information about VoxWare's Portable Voice Picking Solutions, please visit: Voice Picking Expertise You Can Use.
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