The Hidden Cost of Frontline Mobile Problems in Community Care

New research reveals how much productive time frontline employees can lose to login problems alone — and raises a bigger question about the total cost of mobile technology interruptions.

For homecare and community-care organizations, the smartphone has become an essential part of the working day.

Personal support workers, nurses, therapists and other frontline employees increasingly rely on their phones to access schedules, client information, care plans, communicate with colleagues and document their work.

But what happens when the technology doesn't work as expected?

A new study highlights a surprisingly large productivity problem — and it measures only one small part of the potential disruption.

New research: 2.5 hours lost to authentication problems alone

On October 19, 2026, Imprivata and the FIDO Alliance released Frontline Friction: The State of Authentication for Frontline Workers.

The research surveyed 700 IT and security decision-makers across healthcare, manufacturing and other frontline-intensive industries in the United States, United Kingdom, France and Germany.

The findings were striking:

• 37% of frontline workers were estimated to experience an authentication problem in a typical month.
• 2.5 hours of working time were lost per month by each affected employee, on average, due to authentication difficulties.
• 40% of healthcare respondents reported that authentication difficulties delayed patient care or other frontline work.
• 95% of organizations had observed employees using workarounds to overcome authentication difficulties.
• Connectivity problems: Poor cellular coverage, interrupted data service or incorrectly configured cellular connections.
• Device failures: Broken screens, battery problems, damaged phones or devices that stop functioning.
• Application problems: Software crashes, incompatible updates or applications that fail to load.
• Device configuration: Missing applications, incorrect settings or incomplete device provisioning.
• Repair and replacement delays: Time spent reporting problems, arranging replacements and restoring applications.
• Technical support delays: Time spent waiting for assistance or repeatedly contacting support.
• Onboarding and offboarding problems: Delays activating devices, assigning them to employees or recovering equipment.
• 37% experiencing authentication problems would represent approximately 185 employees per month.
• At 2.5 hours lost per affected employee, that would equal approximately 463 hours of lost productivity monthly.
• Over 12 months, the total would be approximately 5,550 working hours annually.

These findings relate specifically to problems accessing systems and applications — such as repeated login requests, password resets, account lockouts and authentication failures.

They do not represent the total productivity lost to all mobile technology problems.

And that's what makes the findings particularly interesting.

Login problems are only part of the story

Consider the typical day of a homecare employee.

Their smartphone may provide access to their daily schedule, directions to the next client, care information, communications with supervisors and the applications required to document completed visits.

Authentication problems can prevent access to those systems.

But there are many other things that can interrupt an employee's use of their smartphone:

Not every one of these issues will occur regularly, and some are outside the direct control of a cellular-management provider.

Nevertheless, they illustrate why the total productivity impact of mobile technology problems could extend well beyond authentication difficulties alone.

What could authentication problems alone cost?

Consider a hypothetical community-care organization with 500 frontline employees.

If the study's findings were applied to this workforce:

At an illustrative fully loaded employer labour cost of $30 per hour, that represents approximately:

$166,500 in annual employee time lost to authentication problems alone.

And remember:

This calculation does not include additional time potentially lost to broken devices, poor connectivity, software failures, replacement delays or other mobile technology problems.

The calculation is illustrative, not a prediction of actual losses for a Canadian homecare organization. The underlying research was conducted outside Canada, and the $30 hourly employer cost is an assumption rather than a verified industry average.

It also doesn't mean that all of this time is recoverable through better cellular management. Authentication problems may originate in identity systems, application design and organizational security policies.

But the example makes one thing clear: even a relatively narrow technology issue can represent a meaningful amount of lost employee time when multiplied across a large workforce.

Five areas community-care organizations should review

1. Device readiness

Are employees receiving smartphones that are fully configured, secured and ready to use on their first day?

Provisioning should include appropriate applications, MDM enrolment, cellular activation and coordination of access requirements.

An employee who cannot access their applications may be unable to complete essential tasks, even when the phone itself is working perfectly.

2. Frontline technical support

When an employee can't access an application or encounters a connectivity problem, how quickly can they reach someone who can help?

For organizations operating outside normal office hours, responsive technical support can be particularly important.

A clear support process can also help distinguish between device, network, application and authentication problems, directing the issue to the appropriate team.

3. Repair and replacement

What happens when a phone is damaged, lost or stops working?

An effective process should minimize downtime through timely troubleshooting, replacement devices and configuration support.

For a geographically distributed workforce, getting a properly configured replacement into an employee's hands may be just as important as having the replacement available.

4. Security and mobile-device management

The research also revealed a concerning consequence of difficult authentication processes: employees sometimes attempt to bypass security controls to get their work done.

Organizations need appropriate MDM, application controls and device-security practices, alongside authentication systems that are practical for frontline employees.

Good security and an efficient employee experience should support one another.

5. Cellular fleet visibility

Do you know which employees have which devices, which cellular lines are active and whether those devices are functioning and being used?

Effective inventory management, onboarding and offboarding can help reduce unnecessary expense while improving accountability.

Visibility into device issues and support requirements can also help identify recurring problems that deserve attention.

Cellular management is about more than the monthly bill

For many organizations, cellular management has traditionally focused on controlling carrier costs, managing plans and monitoring data usage.

Those remain important responsibilities.

But as smartphones become essential frontline tools, the operational dimension of cellular management becomes increasingly significant.

Device availability, support response times, configuration accuracy, security and lifecycle management all contribute to the employee's mobile experience.

And each can influence the amount of productive time employees spend using their devices rather than troubleshooting them.

The real cost of a cellular fleet isn't simply what an organization pays for devices and service. It's also the time and effort required to keep those devices working effectively.

The bigger question: How much mobile productivity are we losing?

The Imprivata/FIDO Alliance research provides an important starting point.

If authentication difficulties alone can consume 2.5 hours per month for an affected frontline employee, it's worth asking what the total impact of all mobile technology problems might be.

That broader impact has not been quantified by this study.

But it suggests an opportunity for community-care organizations to look beyond their cellular bills and assess the effectiveness of their entire mobile-device management process.

At Valet Wireless, we help Canadian organizations manage these responsibilities through managed cellular services, including 24/7 support, MDM support, device lifecycle management, repairs and replacement, cellular expense management and fleet visibility.

Could your organization be overlooking opportunities to reduce mobile-device interruptions, improve employee productivity and control cellular costs?

Our Cellular Management Scorecard provides a simple starting point for reviewing your current practices and identifying areas for improvement.

View the Valet Cellular Management Scorecard

Source: Imprivata and FIDO Alliance, “Frontline Friction: The State of Authentication for Frontline Workers,” October 19, 2026.