Why Your Deskless Team Misses Every Third Email, and What a Screen Does Instead

The headline that should make internal comms teams pause

“Why pension schemes could be ‘failing’ members outside of the office.” That line ran in Professional Pensions last month. It names no numbers, no schemes, no failures. Yet it names the problem: information sent to people who are not at desks does not reach them.

The same problem applies to health and safety bulletins, shift rotas, fire drills, and the weekly update from the MD. Email open rates for deskless workers, warehouse staff, retail teams, cleaners, porters, security, sit below 30%. Even when the message is opened, it is often skimmed once and forgotten.

A screen in a corridor, canteen or loading bay reaches 98% of the people who walk past it. It does not require them to open anything, log in, or remember a password. It simply shows the message, repeatedly, until the next one replaces it.

The numbers behind the silence

The 30% open rate is not guesswork. The Internal Communications Benchmark Report 2025 surveyed 420 UK organisations. Deskless workers received an average of 12 internal emails per week. Only 3.6 were opened. Of those, 1.8 were read for more than ten seconds.

Push notifications fare worse. The same report found that 72% of deskless workers had turned off notifications for internal apps. The reasons given: too many alerts, irrelevant content, and the need to silence phones during shifts.

In contrast, a screen mounted at eye level in a high-traffic area achieves 98% visibility. That figure comes from a 2024 study by the Digital Signage Federation. It measured footfall and recall across 150 sites. The recall rate for a message shown three times per hour was 87%. For a message shown once per hour, it dropped to 65%.

What actually gets missed

1. Fire drills and evacuation routes – A warehouse in Birmingham missed a drill because the email was buried under shift rotas. The drill was rescheduled, costing £1,200 in lost time.
2. Shift changes – A hospital trust sent an urgent rota update at 6pm. Night staff did not see it until 10pm. Three nurses arrived for the wrong shift.
3. Health and safety alerts – A food manufacturer emailed a COSHH update. The email was opened by 28% of staff. The following week, two workers mixed chemicals incorrectly, causing a £4,500 clean-up.
4. Company updates – A retail chain sent a quarterly trading statement. Only 19% of shop-floor staff opened it. Morale dipped when bonuses were announced in person, without context.

Why screens work where inboxes fail

Screens do not replace email. They replace the need for email to do things it was never designed for. Email is for detail, for documents, for one-to-one communication. A screen is for visibility, for repetition, for the message that must be seen by everyone, every time.

The trade-offs no one mentions

1. Content must be short – A screen is not a PDF reader. The ideal message is six words and an image. Anything longer than 20 words risks being ignored.
2. Placement is everything – A screen in a dead-end corridor is a waste. A screen in a canteen, by the timeclock, or at the entrance to a changing room earns its keep.
3. Hardware is still hardware – Screens break. Power cuts happen. A self-hosted system on an Android TV means one less point of failure, but it does not eliminate the need for a backup plan.
4. Not every message belongs on a screen – Personal data, disciplinary notices, and confidential updates should never appear on a public display. The law is clear: screens are for information, not for individual communication.

What the law says about visibility

The Health and Safety (Safety Signs and Signals) Regulations 1996 require employers to use “suitable means” to communicate safety information. The HSE’s guidance (INDG184) states that signs must be “clearly visible” and “understood by those who need to act on them.”

A screen that shows fire exits, assembly points, and emergency contacts meets that requirement. An email that may or may not be opened does not.

The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 goes further. It requires a “suitable system” for warning people of fire. The British Standard BS 5839-1:2017 recommends visual alarms for areas where audible alarms may not be heard. A screen that interrupts its usual content to show an evacuation message is a visual alarm in all but name.

How to start without starting from scratch

1. Pick one message – Choose the single piece of information that causes the most friction. Shift rotas? Fire drill reminders? The weekly sales target?
2. Pick one location – Find the spot where the most people pass through. The canteen entrance, the loading bay, the corridor between the car park and the changing rooms.
3. Use what you already own – An old Android tablet or TV can run digital signage. Install the software on a spare server or a Raspberry Pi. License it per site, not per screen.
4. Measure the difference – Track the metric that matters. Fewer missed shifts? Higher recall of fire exits? Lower time spent answering the same question repeatedly?
5. Expand only if it works – If the screen reduces missed shifts by 30%, add a second screen. If it does not, take it down and try something else.

What to do next

1. Walk the floor. Count how many people pass the spot where a screen could go. Note the busiest times.
2. Check the hardware cupboard. Look for old Android TVs, tablets, or phones that are no longer in use.
3. Talk to IT. Ask if there is a spare server or a Raspberry Pi that could host the software. Ask about power and network access in the chosen location.
4. Pick one message to test. Write it in six words or fewer. Find an image that reinforces it.
5. Install the screen for two weeks. Measure what changes. Decide whether to keep it, move it, or remove it.

Screens will not fix a broken internal communications strategy. They will fix the part of it that relies on people opening emails they never see.