Frontline employees are the foundation of many successful organizations. Rather than working in an office, frontline employees are on the literal front lines of their industry. Frontline workers make up 70% of the world’s workforce. They are the retail staff, hospitality crews, and many other employees, that directly impact customer care and product success. In many industries, they are treated like an afterthought, and for many reasons, it can be challenging to keep them engaged with their work. In this article, we will explore the reasons for this and offer some advice on how to motivate frontline employees with an Employee SuperApp.
Legacy Resources
While corporate employees can easily request new resources, frontline workers are physically separated from technology decision-makers. The lack of corporate oversight leaves frontline workers with outdated and ineffective equipment. Without dependable work resources, data inaccuracy and inaccessibility is a serious risk.
Inadequate Tools
When employers do invest in technology for frontline employees, it rarely meets their unique requirements. In a global survey, over a third of frontline respondents shared that while their company does invest significantly in technology, it doesn’t make their work any easier.
Since frontline jobs come in all shapes and sizes, modern work tools are rarely designed to accommodate their unusual environments. As a result, organizations often default to corporate-centered technology, expecting frontline employees to simply work around obstacles. Creating workarounds for every issue takes time and energy. Constantly settling for office equipment makes frontline staff feel like their concerns are inconsequential to upper management. To motivate frontline employees, you have to find better ways to reach them. You also have to empower frontline workers to make decisions so they can simply fix these problems as they come up.
Limited Information
Frontline employees work in an ever-changing environment. Without a mobile source of information, it’s almost impossible for employees to quickly see updates and access information. In fact, less than half of all frontline workers feel that their current tools support their mobile work environment. Limited information prevents employees from fully utilizing their benefits or understanding changes within the organization.
Limited information doesn’t just damage individual employees, it produces a negative customer experience as well. In customer-facing industries, frontline employees represent the face of your organization. When frontline employees have limited resources, it’s impossible to quickly pass on company news. Instead of offering answers, customers must wait for employees to hunt down information.
In industries where frontline staff primarily work with products, limited information can still create problems. When unexpected situations arise, employees don’t have immediate access to the materials they need. This can reduce productivity and limit employee autonomy. Decreasing employee autonomy leads to discouraged employees and limits overall company creativity.
Poor Communication
For frontline workers, even basic communication is a challenge. Unlike regular office spaces, frontline employees are spread out across multiple areas and work without effective tools for company communication. This lack of reliable communication leaves frontline workers feeling stranded.
For most frontline workers, company information comes through top-down channels. Top management sends news to middle management who then relay it to individual teams. But for frontline employees, indirect corporate communication comes across as a lack of respect for them and their contributions. By distancing their communication with frontline employees, upper management make workers feel undervalued and unimportant.
Furthermore, it creates an inconsistent experience, as different managers pass along news in different ways. Too many layers between the original source and the recipient, and you are essentially playing telephone at scale. While some managers do a great job to motivate frontline employees, others may not.
To delve deeper on this topic, see our guide to fixing frontline employee communication.
Unapproved Apps
Eventually, most frustrated frontline employees turn to alternative communication methods. When these employees communicate using unapproved messaging apps, it can create a massive security gap for your company.
Long-term reliance on unsecured apps can put your company data at risk and jeopardize your internal security. These unsafe communication methods almost always violate HIPAA laws, NDA’s, and other industry compliance requirements. Employees caught using unapproved apps could cause a company to lose its licensing or fail an audit, even if they never experience a security breach. Having a company app can help prevent this problem, while simultaneously increasing employee productivity.
Consolidate Company Apps To Motivate Frontline Employees
One vital aspect of a positive frontline employee experience is enablement. Beyond employee engagement, enablement is the provision of essentials your employees need to perform their job duties effectively. As enablement & engagement support each other, employees become happy, productive, and empowered.
If you want to motivate frontline employees, an Employee SuperApp is your best bet. As a centralized platform that offers various functions to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your teams’ efforts, an Employee SuperApp is the ideal employee enablement solution.
Employee enablement & employee engagement actually go hand in hand. Engagement refers to how motivated your employees are to do their jobs and how connected they are to your company’s values. Enablement relates to how prepared your employees are for their jobs, given the tools and resources you provide.
MangoApps – The Ultimate Employee SuperApp
Our platform is designed to seamlessly take on the issues of both office workers and frontline employees, connecting your entire organization and providing a well-rounded, holistic experience.
MangoApps is the ultimate Employee SuperApp for organizations with a frontline workforce.
With MangoApps, you’re able to give 100% of your workforce all the tools they need in one employee app to increase productivity, improve retention, and boost employee engagement.
MangoApps is customizable and offers a wide range of unique functionalities aimed at solving any business need.
To learn more about how MangoApps can help your organization, book a demo or schedule a call with our team today!
