Solving the Frontline Worker Challenge with Employee Experience
Meeting frontline workers where they are and with the right employee experience
In this webinar produced in partnership with Metrigy, Unisys digital workplace experts Bobby Arbuthnot, Stacy Harder and Stephen Tong share data-driven strategies for enhancing the frontline worker employee experience. They explore Metrigy’s latest research with Beth Schultz, the firm’s vice president of research and principal analyst, and discuss ways that successful organizations are applying their own data to tackle the challenges faced by frontline workers. Let’s dive into the highlights of their discussion.
Persona-based experience management is essential for retaining your frontline workforce
As a whole, frontline workers comprise a substantial portion of the global workforce. These employees are most often the face of a company, providing services directly to customers and influencing brand perception. Whether engaging with customers in person or via digital channels, they are critical in achieving the positive customer experience and satisfaction ratings much sought after by most companies.
Nonetheless, frontline workers don’t always receive a commensurate level of attention in programs aimed at optimizing employee experience. That is, companies often apply employee experience initiatives and make technology decisions universally, with no differentiation between frontline and knowledge workers. This approach can prove detrimental to achieving employee experience goals.
Employee experience goals: The information disparity
Consider the top two employee experience goals designated by the 250 companies Metrigy studied in its global Employee Experience & Workplace Engagement: 2022-23 research. The first goal (for 61.4%) is keeping employees informed about company news and activities. And how do companies disseminate this information? Most–nearly 79%–use email, while at least 47.6% use some form of messaging (text or video), 45.8% use a desktop news portal and 35.5% use a mobile news portal.
Any of these methods assume employees have access to a company desktop or mobile device from which they can check email, receive text messages, or visit a portal. Frontline workers, however, often don’t have dedicated devices. If they even have access to email or any other corporate app or portal, it is most likely through a kiosk or other type of shared terminal. This means they’re not likely to receive company news and information on a timely basis or at all.
The challenges of training and culture building among frontline workers
A similar situation exists around the second most-important goal of employee experience for 56.1% of companies studied: facilitating training and education. Without ready access to corporate devices, frontline workers can feel disadvantaged by their inability to easily participate in digital training and education opportunities.
Problems such as these can exacerbate feelings of isolation and disenfranchisement among frontline workers, leading to a loss of cultural connectedness––a very real and growing issue for companies with frontline and other dispersed workers. Metrigy research shows a loss of community and culture to be the top workplace challenge in 2022, up from 29.1% the year prior.
The need for differentiated employee experience initiatives
All of this isn’t to say that frontline workers are excluded from employee experience initiatives altogether. They’re not: Metrigy’s research shows that nearly 86% of companies do support frontline workers with employee experience tools, such as those that keep workers informed about company activities, measure engagement, or facilitate knowledge sharing. However, only 27% differentiate between customer-facing knowledge workers and business-facing knowledge workers when making employee experience technology decisions.
Successful practices and the importance of personas in employee experience
The latter is the better practice, with proven success, as Metrigy found in its employee experience research. In the employee experience study, roughly 43% of the most successful companies, as measured by factors such as employee satisfaction and retention, make discrete decisions for frontline workers and knowledge workers. That’s a good start, but additional success comes when companies get even more granular, applying employee experience based on user profile or persona. As much as frontline and knowledge workers have distinct needs, so too does one type of frontline worker from another—and these needs might vary by demographic factors such as age or geography, as well. Nearly 38% of the most successful companies apply employee experience offerings by persona, vs. 27% of companies that are falling short on their success metrics.
Hand in hand with personas is experience management, meaning companies must ensure they’re delivering the expected experience for each defined persona. If desk-less frontline personas are motivated by rewards and recognition, for example, then companies must make sure that they’ve enabled these workers with an easy way to participate. Can they use a mobile app to share in-the-moment praise, or do employees need to wait till they can get to a shared terminal or kiosk? Which results in a better experience and greater use of the program among frontline workers?
Tailoring the experience: A strategic approach for empowering frontline workers
There is no one-size-fits-all approach to delivering a stellar experience for frontline workers. But accounting for their distinct circumstances, defining personas, measuring success and evaluating areas for improvement will help companies not only more effectively manage the experience, but also break down the barriers that have for too long isolated frontline workers from the rest of their colleagues.
Discover how Unisys can help optimize your frontline worker employee experience.
This webinar recap was authored by Beth Schultz, Vice President of Research and Principal Analyst, Metrigy