Frontline Employees Are NOT Engaged! But How Do We Fix It?

What happens when the people closest to your customers feel disengaged?

Well, it’s fair to assume your customer experience suffers.

So when I heard these numbers at CIPD 's Festival of Work , I was pretty worried:

• 33% of frontline employees report doing the bare minimum needed in their job!

• 40% don't feel motivated or present the majority of the time.

Whether it’s dealing with customers directly, building products or prepping orders...

Doing the bare minimum or struggling with motivation most of the time isn’t good news for anyone.

Customers. Employees. Businesses.?

They’ll all suffer if we can’t deliver a better experience for frontline employees.

So, let’s try and answer two questions.

1. Why are they actively disengaged with work?
2. And is there anything we can do about low frontline engagement?

Shoutout to Luke Boshoff and Flip for the numbers and inspiration to write this post - check out our original summary of their Festival of Work presentation here .

Three reasons for low frontline employee engagement

1. It’s easy to feel like a second-class employee on the frontline

If you’ve ever worked in a frontline role, you’ll get it.

Worse pay, less flexibility, more disconnection and worse communication are common symptoms for people suffering outside desk-based roles.

And, according to Flip, people on the frontlines actively want the opposite.

They crave more flexibility, competitive salaries, better training, and effective communication.

2. The tech they use isn’t tailored to the frontline experience

Consistency of tech is a great thing!?

We all know how bad it can be when every team uses a different tool and none of them speak to each other.

But this desire to be consistent could be contributing to worse frontline experiences.

People in office-based roles often build the tech stack that will be used across the business.

Meaning they’ll find something that works in offices and try to map it onto frontline roles.

I’ve seen it first hand.

When I was a delivery driver for a UK supermarket, the tech we used for our routes and managing orders was clearly selected by someone who’d never seen the role up close.

And this ultimately results in frontline workers using tools that aren’t fit for purpose.

Think about the amount of training and education that’s built to be delivered on a laptop and shared with people who only access phones on the job, at best.

3. People on the frontline feel out of the loop and left out of development opportunities

We mentioned both of these briefly, but when one influences the other, we need to call them out.

Being blunt, communication to frontline employees isn’t good enough.

And it’s affecting both their experience and performance:

• Only 35% think the communication they receive is effective.

• 37% feel that fractured communication creates challenges in their day-to-day work.
• Only 39% feel heard, down 34% from 2021.

Source: Axonify via workvivo

If poor communication is limiting people’s performance and tech isn’t built to help them on the job, that probably translates to lower frontline performance in some way.

And that lack of impact could be playing into an existing lack of development opportunities for frontline workers.

According to 麦肯锡 :

“Annual employee turnover among frontline retail workers has been at least 60 percent for a long time.”

With a lack of career development named as the second-highest reason they consider leaving their job in that research.

Three ways we can improve frontline employee engagement

1. Bring knowledge and information to people on the frontline

The reason this story resonates so strongly with us is because we see it up close and personal at HowNow.

Our customers are delivering relevant and accessible learning to people on the frontlines.

Like FitFlop .

When they opened their New York store, they recognised that their people needed product knowledge and customer service training ahead of launch day.

So they created a mix of company consistent and store specific resources that could be consumed on the HowNow mobile app.

These included a range summary resource that took 15 minutes complete, two-minute videos on store stock and product returns, and more.

Not only did this mean people were enabled ahead of open day, it meant they could easily find and revisit those resources in the flow of work ??

2. Build relevant value propositions and tech stacks for frontline workers

This was another big lesson from Flip’s presentation; we have to create a value proposition that’s relevant to the frontline workforce.

And address those concerns around day-to-day experience, development and communication.

This all starts with our talent and hiring processes.

• How do we frame the frontline experience in job descriptions?
• And what promises do we make during the interview process?

Then our goal is to deliver on that, finding the right tech for that proposition and the problems they face each day.

If we do that, we create more positive sentiment and engagement, which hopefully puts an end to doing the bare minimum and low motivation.

3. Bring skills-first learning to the frontline

One office habit we don’t want to replicate on the frontline is content-first learning.

The idea that we create content we THINK we might solve problems first and then distribute it to people it MIGHT be relevant to.

Instead we need to look at development through the lens of skills.

Frontline workers make up an estimated 70% of the total workforce, and the World Economic Forum states that 44% will see their skills disrupted in the next five years.

That’s a lot of changing skills in roles that already struggle with development opportunities.

Ultimately, that means we need to help frontline workers build the skills needed to perform, stay relevant, and help companies hit their goals.

Why do so many companies struggle to make the shift to skills-driven L&D?

Because it’s typically a really difficult task!

From what we hear, companies who map their skills manually take between 9 and 12 months to get it done.

And that’s before you measure the skills you have and try to close the gaps - which probably means your skills needs have shifted before you get to that point!

This is why we launched HowNow AI!

Designed to help you map skills frameworks for every role in your company in seconds. Then measure current skills at speed and scale, allowing you to close the gaps through learning.

Here’s how that first crucial step works - the mapping of skills using HowNow AI:

If you’re ready to make the shift to skills-driven L&D, check out HowNow AI here .