AI Promises to Make Blue-Collar Work Safer and More Efficient

Newsweek

5 days ago

Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
Across the workforce, automation, machine-learning and generative AI seem to be reshaping everything. While there is little doubt that the latest tech is driving huge changes in how knowledge workers operate, manufacturing and other physical, on-site work is also increasingly adopting emerging technology.
Technology leaders in blue-collar industries and vendors in this space point to a few developments helping push AI forward, even though SaaS and cloud uptake has been somewhat slower in these fields than in others. The latest technology is largely being used to prepare, inform and connect frontline workers so they can operate more efficiently and spend less time on admin work.
"It was actually hard to get data from physical operations, historically," Kiren Sekar, chief product officer at Samsara, told Newsweek. "If you think about trucks driving all over the place, equipment out at remote sites, workers performing field services 10 or 20 years ago, it was hard to understand what was going on. Versus in a financial institution, you can connect all of the electronic banking records into a computer: same for retail, same for health care."
Samsara offers camera, sensor and analysis systems that help operations leaders in manufacturing, logistics, waste management, other municipal services and food production to improve safety and efficiency. Its first product was a sensor that tracked temperature, GPS location and vehicle diagnostics, and, later, the company added dashboard cameras.
Sekar notes that the cost of sensors and cameras going down, the improved coverage of wireless networks and, finally, cloud data storage paired with machine learning and generative AI has allowed for the world of "physical work" to accelerate technology adoption.
"You need to get all the data from the physical world that previously was offline, bring it into the software, and then once you get it into software, you should be able to make these operations a lot better," Sekar explained. "That was the thesis for starting our company."
At Axis Water Technologies, a Texas-based water treatment and services company, chief technology officer Aaron Bagwell began in field service and operational management roles, learning Salesforce administration while working as a general manager to get on his current path to CTO. He said Axis Water uses Salesforce's AI-powered frontline service to support pre-visit prep, knowledge sharing and post-visit summaries. The company also uses a sales coach to help teams with customer conversations.
"They can fix problems faster in the field and get the customer taken care of much quicker," Bagwell told Newsweek. "If someone runs across a problem that's not in a manual, we can go create a knowledge base article; that way, when another guy comes across the same problem, he doesn't have to spend the same two hours troubleshooting the next time."
Bagwell points to the importance of building advocates to drive adoption and identifying high performers and other respected people across various teams to help make the case for new tech. He said that in the first month, around 10 percent of the field had used the products, and a few months later, it's up to around 90 percent.
"Some of our technicians have been in here since we were still on pen and paper," Bagwell said. "Those guys are a little bit harder to get buy-in from. They say, 'I could have filled up my invoice in five minutes on paper.' But look what you gave the customer now. We're able to give this long paragraph of post-work summary with photos and everything ... give them a good, curated document."
Photo-illustration by Newsweek/Getty/Canva
Efficiency in the Field
As Newsweek previously covered, some simple AI tools are expanding pathways into blue-collar work and also making significant progress on safety. For companies with vehicle fleets, such as moving, delivery, field technicians and truck drivers, decreasing accidents can be a significant driver of cost savings. Samsara is helping companies optimize operations and incentivize safe driving in a way that is also helping with retention.
"It's a traditionally very high turnover environment," Sekar explained. "[One client] was dealing with increasing accident costs, and of course, there's a human cost of that as well," Sekar said of a prominent shipping and logistics company working with Samsara. "Their accident cost dropped by 49 percent ... a lot fewer injuries. Then they started using the technology to help reward safe driving, and they sawtheir job turnover and vacancies drop by half."
Samsara has grown to over $1.5 billion in recurring revenue and expanded a client list that includes DHL, Sysco, Home Depot and the City of Denver. Before Samsara, Sekar's last company, Meraki, sold to Cisco, where it remains a thriving business unit. He shared that before that he and some of his cofounders were installing Wi-Fi networks for businesses.
"We're seeing this really rapid adoption, whereas 10 years ago, you saw a lot of pen and paper, clipboards. The computer systems were literally green screens of text, and that's been really changing rapidly over the last handful of years," Sekar said.
Taksina Eammano, EVP and GM of field service at Salesforce, reiterated that emerging technology is improving the capabilities of information capture for people who work on-site.
"There are so many more next-generation products that have signals that tell us what we need to do. They can warn us before something needs maintenance and needs repair, so we can be more efficient and [environmentally friendly]," Eammano told Newsweek.
She emphasized that technicians can collect much richer information in advance of their appointments to make them go smoother and ease the transportation burden on field teams.
"Our mobile devices are so much more powerful now to be able to get data to search this moment," Eammano explained. "You don't need all your measurement pools, because you can use AR to fairly accurately measure and screen where things are."
These sensors can save field workers small chunks of time that would be spent on guesswork or early diagnosis.
"Say you're an elevator company and you're servicing, like, a hotel," Eammano said. "Saving you 20 minutes of not just walking around—and knowing the exact location to walk to—is really powerful. ... This is all the things that happen in the background getting you prepared to get on-site."
Saving 10–20 minutes over the course of four to seven visits per day across thousands of employees can add up to significant time savings.
"When you call the contact center, you don't just say the machine is broken. We have more detail," Eammano said. "So the technician goes out there, and they feel like, you know, they know what's going on."
Making the Job More Attractive
Despite a lot of effort to highlight the stability and strong pay of trade work, especially for electricians and plumbers, younger people remain heavily interested in other buzzy fields, such as technology and social media or entrepreneurship. But opportunities run aplenty in trade fields, which typically experience high annual turnover. Increasingly, software is being deployed to focus on connection and information-sharing, with the ultimate goals of retention, onboarding and ongoing training.
"Because of high turnover, every year, the vast majority of the workers in a job are new. So anything you can do to bring that down and make new people more effective is super valuable," Sekar notes.
These industries also often have a glut of older, highly experienced workers. This creates two challenges: transferring knowledge to new employees and the possibility of understaffing as waves of older workers retire. Though some recent research suggests interest in blue-collar work is growing in the youngest cohort of the workforce.
"There's certain customers and industries where they're facing silver tsunami retirement challenges and [loss of] institutional knowledge from out in the field," Eammano said. "We also had this whole COVID break, where we didn't send as many apprentices for on-the-job training. So there's been this knowledge gap."
At ABM, a facilities management company that provides services like custodial, HVAC, parking and landscaping, a heavy emphasis has been placed on retention with this group, even though high turnover has long been considered a cost of doing business.
"We're piloting different things at our frontline supervisory level," Lisa Syacsure, VP of field operations at ABM, told Newsweek. "And hopefully it'll make a huge impact on our retention."
Because chain restaurants and coffee shops often offer higher pay than ABM, Syacsure said, ABM's retention strategy has been focused on manager quality and career guidance. Syacsure pointed to updated leadership training and an AI coaching tool that is customized for different roles and geographies.
"We've developed playbooks, refreshing those playbooks and really focusing on that frontline manager and ensuring that they onboard correctly and hire well," Syacsure said. "Then ensuring our frontline supervisors engage and support those team members."
Syacsure is also working with her team of around 100 HR reps to share their technology wins. She admits she was a novice to AI when she was recently promoted to her VP role but has since embraced the emerging technology and its possibilities.
"I have a weekly Friday call with my entire team, and we do case studies," she said. "I would pull up ChatGPT, and then, with the 24/7 coach that we've been piloting, I started showing my team: I have this issue, What would I do? ... [I] share my screen, and I show them how to use it and how it works. So now that they are utilizing the coach virtually as well, they're seeing the impact that it can have on their role."
Another company, the Montreal-based WorkJam, offers an intranet built to connect and develop frontline employees. It can also help with flexible shifts and even pay-as-you-work plans. So far it has been particularly popular with retail and convenience store clients.
"The adoption levels are fairly low for a typical intranet," Steve Kramer, cofounder and CEO of WorkJam, told Newsweek. "The adoption level for frontline is maybe 20 to 25 percent," in part because these workers still need to log into other systems to manage their pay, benefits or schedule.
WorkJam aims to combine all of these in a solution that is purposely built for the frontline employee and has met some early success with clients like Ulta, Shell, Kroger, Hilton, JCPenney and Circle K.
"We're typically getting like 95 percent plus adoption with high 80 to 90 percent weekly average usage," Kramer said.
Kramer's philosophy is that keeping frontline workers connected and informed is going to be the best way to drive retention and high customer satisfaction. WorkJam also has modules for learning and recognition.
"The employers will be able to drive operational excellence in a way that they weren't able to before, but at the same time, the frontline workers are able to have better clarity and knowledge around what they should be doing, how they should be servicing their customers and also potentially get recognized in a more objective way for the work that they're doing as well," Kramer said.
With high turnover, an improved onboarding and ongoing education experience could lead to more internal promotions, improved customer satisfaction and wider best-practice sharing.
"Organizations are not educating their frontline in the most effective way, so it has an impact on customer service, on service consistency," Kramer said. "It certainly has a big impact on compliance too."