The Shift | May 25th

Hi there and welcome to today’s edition of?The Shift?—?the only fortnightly newsletter for frontline champions, delivered to you by Blink.

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How resilient is your frontline workforce?

New data?from talent consultancy, Kelly, claims that?48% of executives are struggling to build and access the workforce needed to outperform their competitors. The same percentage agree that they struggle to understand what employees want and need for new opportunities to be attractive.

These findings come from Kelly’s global report?The Three Pillars of Workforce Resilience?and act as evidence that today’s organizations are not as resilient as they could be. “In a crisis of talent, the organizations that will thrive are the ones that can build up workforce resilience” — so if the resilience of your talent pool and pipeline is in question, you’ll want to act now.

Kelly recommends:

• An integrated workforce agility strategy, viewing contingent and permanent staff with the same strategic importance
• Recommitting to DEI?and creating opportunities for new groups of workers
• Really?listening to your employees, using every communication channel to understand what matters to them and acting accordingly
• A culture of continuous learning?to better develop the talent you have today
• Digital solutions for reshaping the employee experience:?“No business will be untouched by digital transformation in the next decade, and no area of business will be unchanged. Your talent, HR, and people teams need to dedicate themselves to understanding the power of emerging technology…”

Curious how Blink’s super-app creates a modern, digital employee experience? Our?two-minute demo video?brings the benefits to life.

You can also join us on Tuesday, June 6th?for a live conversation with Care Synergy:?Driving frontline employee engagement through a super-app.?Register here.

Respecting the frontline

There are two ways to define ‘respect’. One, a feeling of admiration for a person’s achievements, abilities, or qualities. The second, showing due regard for the feelings, wishes, or rights of others.

The latter is what we’d call a hygiene factor in the workplace — or it should be, at least.?No employee should be expected to work in an environment where they feel?disregarded.?But increasingly, the first definition is becoming a hygiene factor too.?Millennial and Gen Z workers, now representing nearly half of the US workforce,?expect?to feel truly valued and respected at work. And if they don’t, it’s a major attrition factor.

Research reveals?that feeling respected comes from the most primitive part of the brain; it’s not necessarily associated with rational, cognitive thoughts. Feeling disrespected triggers fight, flight, or freeze responses —?an employee who feels disrespected might counter with other disrespectful behavior, retreat and hide, and/or disengage.?This makes clear just how essential feelings of respect are for a happy, productive workforce.

According to the Modern CEO from Fast Company, creating a culture of respect requires:

• Leading by example:?Treat everyone with decency, saying “please” and “thank you” genuinely and consistently. This will encourage others to do the same
• Telling employees?why?you respect them:?Use performance reviews and other check-ins to tell the team what, specifically, you respect about how they work and who they are
• Calling out disrespectful behavior when you see it:?Timely, detailed feedback is essential — help employees understand the impact of disrespectful behaviors and explain what they could have done differently
• Never meeting disrespect with further disrespect:?Remain respectful always, even when giving feedback on disrespectful behaviors. Speak to the person in private and stay level-headed

Keeping reading about?the importance of respect and trust within frontline teams?on the Blink blog.

Nurses are more likely to quit now than mid-pandemic

The upheaval caused by the COVID pandemic might be over for desk-based workers, but tremors are still being felt for much of the world’s frontline, whether as?staff shortages,?job shortages, or burnout risks. Healthcare employees in particular remain stretched.?AMN Healthcare’s 2023 Survey of Registered Nurses?found that?30% of nurses say they’re likely to leave the profession due to the pandemic — that’s 7% more compared to 2021.

Since AMN’s 2021 study — conducted right in the middle of the pandemic —?career satisfaction has dropped ~10% for nurses. And only?one-third of nurses say they have ideal time to spend with patients, down 10 points from 2021.

It’s more crucial than ever for healthcare organizations to increase job satisfaction and?free nurses up from laborious admin tasks. If they don’t, patient outcomes will suffer, and the workforce will continue to disengage.

What 'good' looks like for digital frontline experience

Staying with the above thought for a moment, the UK Government has updated its advice on?‘What Good Looks Like’ for health authorities and care providers.?And while the detail is specific to the healthcare space, the learnings are relevant across a far broader spectrum of frontline organizations.

The What Good Looks Like framework groups success factors together as:

• Transforming:?Improving care (or service) and creating healthy populations using data and digital processes
• Connecting:?Empowering people and supporting the workforce; harnessing people-centered approaches and digital technologies to improve quality of life and the employee experience
• Digitizing: Delivering a well-led, safe practice based on smart foundations, ensuring leaders fully understand the benefits and best practices of digital transformation

We unpack how critical equitable digital access is for healthcare workers in our whitepaper,?Achieving employee techquity: Why successful digital inclusion in healthcare starts in your teams.

Download it?to start a meaningful digital transformation today.

In case you missed it

??“Much like evolution, manufacturers are on the precipice, and need to either adapt or die.”?This is the advice of Sarah Loates of Loates HR Consultancy when discussing the “image problem” manufacturing businesses face. Read more?here:?(Quarter of manufacturing workers think the sector has an image problem, report finds, but HR could help)

??“While it hasn’t been the sexiest job opportunity for folks compared to some of the other things that they’re graduating with, it also hasn’t been on the radar.”?The New York Times reports?on the threat a lack of talent poses to innovation.?(America’s Semiconductor Boom Faces a Challenge: Not Enough Workers)

??“The company is a great example of delivering strong growth whilst maintaining its core values”?explains capital markets director at Houlihan Lokey, the investment banking firm that’s helped Cardinal Global Logistics move to a new ownership model.?Click through for the full story.?(Cardinal Global Logistics becomes ‘biggest employee-owned company of its kind in the world’ in ‘transformational’ move)

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