Smartphones have quietly become the centre of working life for for South Africa’s frontline employees.

It’s how shifts get communicated. It’s where payslips land. It’s how leave gets requested and where queries are answered. It’s also how people manage money, stay in touch with family and navigate daily life.

This isn’t a niche segment. Deskless workers represent 75% of South Africa’s workforce, or roughly 12 to 13 million people. They are the backbone of retail, logistics, security, agriculture, hospitality and manufacturing.

There is no laptop waiting at a desk. Company device programs are capital intensive, and they often result in an admin nightmare and a lot of wastage. Bring your own device is becoming more of an expectation for employees.

Employers increasingly rely on digital communication and self-service HR. But the single most important piece of infrastructure that makes this possible is a reliable smartphone with affordable data.

When a phone is unreliable, broken, or out of data, the consequences are immediate. Messages get missed. Shifts don’t get filled. Admin becomes harder to manage.

So why is it left entirely to the employee to figure out?

 

When the phone doesn’t work, work can’t happen

A reliable phone provides access and creates a communication pathway between the frontline and HR or head office. But for many deskless workers, the phone is how the job actually gets done.

Esaw Dlamini is a merchandiser stationed at a major retailer in the Western Cape. Each morning, he signs the register and takes a photo to send to his manager. Throughout the day, he photographs stock levels and expired products to create a paper trail. He estimates he communicates with his manager hundreds of times in a single shift.

For a long time, Esaw struggled to perform his role to the best of his ability. His employer didn’t have a company device programme and required him to have his own phone.

He did, but it was slow, the camera was poor, and he couldn’t always afford data. His manager would call and he’d only get the notification when he topped up, or when he entered a WiFi zone.

Esaw’s story is a common one. A merchandiser who can’t take a clear photo of defective stock can’t do their job properly. A security officer who can’t be reached on his way to site can’t receive a shift change.

The difference between a phone that works and one that doesn’t is often the difference between a job done well and a job done badly, or not done at all. And for certain industries, like medical and security, lives are quite literally on the line.

 

 

Why are deskless workers excluded?

According to the National Credit Regulator, more than 10 million working South Africans have impaired credit records. For workers earning R6,000 to R12,000 a month, a single missed debit order can lock them out of formal credit for years.

The pressure they’re under to make ends meet is absolutely immense, especially in the many cases where one person is the breadwinner supporting extended family.

From a traditional telco’s perspective, this creates risk. Collection effort is high. Margins are thin. Chasing small monthly payments at scale is expensive.

The system simply wasn’t designed for the deskless workforce.

As a result, many workers are excluded from contracts entirely and pushed into prepaid options. On the surface, prepaid feels flexible. In reality, it’s punishing. Small bundles bought in increments cost far more over time. Data runs out at the worst moments. Staying connected becomes a tradeoff.

 

The cost of staying connected

South Africans pay up to R85 per GB of data. Or, equivalent to nearly 4 hours of work for someone on minimum wage.

When you consider the fact that around 76% of mobile data users in the country are on prepaid plans, the numbers become staggering.

What do you do when you have to choose between being able to afford getting home or topping up your data to clock out after a long shift?

“The cost of being a deskless worker is quietly exploitative,” says Nonsuku Mthimkhulu, Jem’s Head of Customer. “When someone is paying R50 here, R30 there for small or expiring data bundles, they’re spending far more than they would on a contract. Making that cost more palatable frees up funds for food, school, transport.”

In a country where 73% of frontline employees have less than R500 in savings, data costs are pushing people further and further towards the edge.

Workers are expected to be reachable, responsive and digitally engaged. The vast majority are carrying the full financial burden of making that possible. And for a demographic that is already prone to debt, that burden pushes people closer to the edge of true financial obscurity.

Connectivity starts to feel less like a means to progress and more like a participation tax.

 

Why employers must pay attention

Reliable connectivity underpins every modern HR and communications initiative.

Around the world, the average deskless worker loses 120 hours per year due to poor access to information or compromised communications channels. Given that this includes developed countries, it’s not a stretch to suggest that SA’s numbers are even this is even higher.

If messages don’t reach employees, systems break down. If workers are constantly managing data scarcity, engagement suffers. If people feel excluded from the tools required to do their jobs, trust erodes.

“Employers need to be honest with themselves about the problems their teams face,” says Caroline van der Merwe, Jem’s co-founder and Chief Operating Officer.

“Frontline work is high-churn by nature. But plenty of that can be mitigated by solving basic problems. If you can connect to your employees reliably, and your employees can connect to the rest of the world affordably, the impact is transformational. There’s so much mutual upside.”

 

What changes when the employer steps in?

This is where Jem comes in.

Jem is an HR and employee benefits platform that sits inside the employment relationship, with visibility into payroll and certainty around payment dates. By using payroll deduction, Jem reduces risk and collection effort in a way that traditional models can’t.

This unlocks access to mobile contracts for workers (who would otherwise be excluded) without increasing financial pressure.

Jem isn’t trying to replace telcos or build parallel infrastructure. We’re willing to assume the risk on behalf of the employee because we have the context and we understand the need.

The result? Workers can access smartphones and data at fair, predictable prices without risk and capital input from the employer.

Over the life of a contract, that can mean savings of up to R6,000 compared to prepaid alternatives.

Let’s go back to Esaw. His new phone arrived within two days. He’s connected at work, at home and on the move. The camera is sharp enough to capture stock details and barcodes clearly. His colleagues saw the difference and started asking where they could get one too.

“Getting a phone from Jem, it’s much better than what I experienced before,” Esaw says. “The network is not a problem. I’m at work, I’m at home, I’m everywhere. It’s working very smoothly.”

 

Treating phones like the work tools they are

If employers expect digital participation from frontline teams, access to connectivity cannot be treated as optional. And if smartphones are essential to work, exclusion from affordable access is a structural failure — not an individual one.

Jem exists to remove the penalties that deskless workers have carried for too long. To lower the cost of staying connected. To treat mobile access with the seriousness it deserves.

A smartphone is no longer a personal device for the deskless workforce. It is key infrastructure. And when employers start treating it that way, and step in to ensure their people have what they need to do the job, something shifts. The relationship stops being transactional and starts being something closer to partnership.

That’s the opportunity. And it’s available now.