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Improving Employee Experience for Frontline Workers: What You Need to Know

Frontline employees are often acknowledged as the workers that keep the world running.

Despite this, frontline employees are frequently forgotten when businesses concentrate on topics like employee experience and possibilities for career progression. While a company might strive to create a workplace culture that promotes employee respect and encourages productivity, the focus tends not to include the expectations of frontline employees. As a result, these workers can feel left out – this sense of exclusion negatively impacts productivity and employee mindsets.

Frontline Challenges

Limited communication

Communication is key

Frontline personnel can be tough to connect with, especially without efficient team communication and direct access to digital channels. Workplace consultants point out that the primary challenge can be linked to a lack of company-provided devices or platforms that are not accessible via feature phones.

Staff members without access to devices or platforms are left in the dark and as a result, they may struggle to perform their duties in an efficient manner.

Isolation from human resource functions

The aforementioned lack of communication can also translate into a detachment from the frontline and human resources functions. Frontline employees (as defined by the Brookings Institution), frequently work remotely while carrying out their jobs and without a clear way to communicate, staff may feel that their concerns and needs are not being properly addressed.

Diverse activities

Frontline employees are often directly involved in serving consumers. They’re often switching between assignments and are under near constant work pressure as a result of the variety of tasks they have to tackle.

As a result of this, communication can be negatively impacted and again, without access to well-structured, clear communication channels, staff may feel that their ability to perform is being limited.

Improving Frontline Employee Experience

Improving the frontline work experience is key to addressing employee feelings of isolation and unimportance, as well as promoting an inclusive workplace culture.

Internal Communications & Organisational Growth when Improving Employee Experience

Organisations must concentrate on communication

A clear communication policy is essential for bettering the employee experience. By providing channels (such as devices and software) for staff to connect through, companies will be able to learn what their staff members require in order to ensure that they don’t feel alone or unheard.

This allows for closer links between employees and management, additionally letting managers know what prospects for professional growth staff members are interested in for future development.

Peer-to-Peer Communications

Continuing with communication, a key factor to consider is the collaborative benefits that are brought about when clear, efficient and accessible channels are available for frontline employees to utilise. An organisational digital platform, for example, makes it possible for both management and frontline staff to communicate with each other remotely.

Key Benefits:

Assists with problem-solving
Allows all company stakeholders to remain informed of developments

Tracking Goals

Placing a strong emphasis on employee learning and growth is an important step in designing a well-rounded work experience. Adapting this policy to frontline work experience is something that companies should strive to implement. This can be done through a digital platform bolstering professional growth.

Frontline HR Functionality

Outdated processing technologies further exacerbate the existing gap between human resources and frontline workers. Frontline work is often impeded by paper forms and slips – there is no more space for these outmoded administrative approaches.

The solution lies with digitisation, a central system that is designed to be accessible for frontline workers, should they need to voice their concerns.

Health and Safety

Organisational health and safety protocols benefit greatly from all employees having access to a platform where they can both view information and report issues. With regards to frontline staff, an easily accessible and centralised system allows for minimal downtime when problems occur.

Key Benefits:

Health and safety information is readily available
Easy to report any violations or concerns

Employee Recognition

According to an employee survey, only one in three workers strongly agree that they receive workplace recognition.

Making use of a digital solution allows for companies to widely recognise well-performing employees, while simultaneously fostering a workplace environment that rewards and promotes employee growth, regardless of where frontline workers are located.

Solutions and Benefits

Leveraging digital technology

Improving the frontline experience through digital means

Organisations can benefit from using technology to develop channels of communication between management and frontline staff. As outlined, the primary issue affecting the frontline experience is difficulty with regard to communication.

In response, companies should strive to offer a platform, ideally with a ‘mobile-first’ focus, that can assist frontline employees by providing internal information along with a communication channel that allows for them to relay any concerns related to their duties. This helps to combat the feelings of isolation and exclusion that active frontline workers often may face.

Benefits to Improving Employee Experience

Company-side

Having a centralised platform for employee communication can benefit an organisation in several ways.

Notable Upsides

Fosters health workplace culture
Increased productivity
Provides instant communication structures

By simplifying and consolidating communication channels into a single platform, it becomes possible to implement internal communication strategies that are clear and consistent. This in turn benefits employees who want constant access to information and allows for instant communication between frontline staff and other departments within the organisation.

Employee-side

Frontline employees are the face of the company, the ones who interact most with customers and represent the brand. Generally, when things go wrong, customers turn to frontline employees as the face of their organisations.

With an effective internal communications strategy, backed up by an accessible communications platform, frontline workers can be suitably prepared to implement business policies in emergencies, be aware of the appropriate approach to handle challenging situations and be able to accurately report and catalogue the events.