The Deskless Report
Our annual survey of frontline workers, frontline managers, and corporate leaders asks, “What’s the state of the frontline?”
Workers are desperate for stability, frontline managers are burned out, and corporate leaders are trying to look to the future – but aren’t sure of how to get there. What’s the solution?
This year’s Deskless Report explores the state of the frontline world by delving deeper into the worker, manager, and corporate experience – and what these groups need to thrive. For this year’s report, Nudge polled 268 frontline corporate leaders and 1018 frontline workers and managers in retail, foodservice, facilities management, and other industries with predominantly deskless workers (whose modern definition includes any worker who needs to be physically present to do their job).
CORPORATE
LEADERS
FRONTLINE
MANAGERS
FRONTLINE
WORKERS
FRONTLINE
INDUSTRIES
The insights that follow will open a discussion around redefining the concepts of communication, feedback, training, and technology, and how they all level up to the broader concept of frontline enablement. Additional insights and findings can be found in the full report here.
INSIGHT #1
The frontline manager is a critical intermediary – but they’re overburdened and burning out
Frontline managers feel powerless to drive the change their organizations desperately need to grow and thrive. Thanks to legacy communication, feedback, training, and execution systems, frontline managers are shouldering a heavy load acting as the intermediary between corporate and staff. They’re trying to bubble up feedback and employee insights, while also communicating crucial information back to their staff and implementing cultural, product, and promotional initiatives – all while simply trying to stay afloat on a day-to-day basis.
Frontline managers play the crucial role of disseminating information and executing on corporate initiatives, while managing daily operations, training, and parsing frontline feedback. In fact, workers rely on their direct manager for 8 of the 10 categories of critical information. But there’s a strain on managers as they try to ensure the messages are getting through to everyone, without scalable systems and processes in place.
“There’s a strain on managers as they try to ensure the messages are getting through to everyone, without scalable systems and processes in place.”
The primary communication and feedback channels used by managers to interact and enable their staff are in-person conversations (67%), text/phone calls (56%), and email (54%). They’re using personal phones and apps (not company-sanctioned) to reach their staff and keep shifts covered, further diminishing any work/life balance or separation. They’re trying to navigate absenteeism, disengagement, and turnover, while trying to stay afloat – and they feel like their corporate leaders are out of touch with the chaos that’s really happening. As a result, managers are overburdened and burnt out. And what happens to frontlines – and corporate – when their intermediary is too burnt out to lead?
of frontline managers
feel burnt out on a daily basis
of corporate leaders said
their investment in enabling
and training their managers
has increased
The research shows that organizations see the risk. Of the corporate leaders polled, 42% said their investment in enabling and training their managers has increased. With a structured approach in place – let’s call it “frontline management enablement” – organizations can bolster frontline managers with the resources and tools they need to avoid burnout and optimize output.
“Corporate tried to roll out a core values thing. They invested a lot in it, but they’re working in the corporate office. They want to get people excited about things that people don’t care about.”
Assistant General Manager
Regional foodservice chain
Insight #2
The fundamental needs of workers aren’t getting met (because there’s a misalignment on what matters most)
While corporate leaders are advocating for initiatives that target community and culture (both of which are, of course, crucial drivers of success and happiness), workers are still struggling with more fundamental needs around livelihood and stability. And until these more fundamental needs are met, frontline workers will struggle to participate, accept, or see value in more peripheral initiatives.
Borrowing from Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, you can picture workers’ needs as a pyramid. At the base of the hierarchy, frontline workers need a Livelihood, i.e., the means to support themselves and their household. A livable wage is fundamental, followed by a thrivable wage. Right above the base is Stability: the confidence that your livelihood is relatively secure. This is driven by consistent income, hours, a steady work schedule, and the assurance that your job isn’t going anywhere.
From there, we see Community, a camaraderie between employees, as well as between frontline workers and their managers, that helps create a sense of belonging, mutual respect, accountability, and investment. And Culture is at the very top. Here’s where we get into “the why” that workers need to know to execute effectively and efficiently. Culture includes a broadly shared sense of mutual values, vision, and ideals and is a nebulous and abstract concept compared to the more tangible and immediate needs of Livelihood, Stability, and Community.
“Until these fundamental needs are met, frontline workers will struggle to participate, accept, or see value in more peripheral initiatives.”
When foundational needs are not fully met in frontline environments (which is the case according to the majority of frontline interviewees), building a broader sense of company culture becomes ineffective at best and insulting at worst, especially when culture initiatives are prioritized over fundamental needs. As a result, frontline workers’ desire to quit has increased.
Workers’ desire to quit by industry
Insight #3
Fractured communication is prevalent in frontlines – and it is negatively impacting everyone
The employee communication cascade at frontlines remains surprisingly similar to that of deskbound companies. This top-down, ad-hoc approach to communication continues to be shoehorned into frontline infrastructure, but with such a different infrastructure than deskbound organizations, this system of information sharing creates a lose-lose-lose situation, where no one along the chain – from workers to managers to corporate leaders – gets what they want or need.
How frontline managers and workers receive information
What is top-down communication?
Information shared down the organization from head office to functional leadership to managers to workers via email or word-of-mouth, with little opportunity for tracking data on who information has reached and whether they understand it.
What is ad-hoc communication?
Information shared informally from managers to workers, or vice versa, through personal channels not sanctioned by the company, like texting, WhatsApp messaging, or via personal emails.
With top-down communication in place at the corporate level, head office loses all semblance of data that can inform senior leadership about what’s being read, what’s resonating, and what’s falling flat. There’s also a danger of “broken telephone,” where information is filtered from person to person down the organization, leading to misinterpretations and inconsistencies. At the managerial level, the communication channels being employed are not only one-way, they’re also ad-hoc. In-person communication, texts/phone calls, and emails are being used to keep the business going, with managers focused on covering shifts and quickly sharing tactical information. And at the worker level, they simply don’t find this top-down communication effective. When asked on a scale of 1 to 10 how effective their organization’s communication is, 65% of corporate leaders scored their communications an 8 or higher, while only 35% of workers did the same. Workers also don’t feel heard. Only 39% of frontline workers feel heard by their organization – a number that plummeted from 59% in 2021.
“Only 39% of frontline workers feel heard by their organization – a number that plummeted from 59% in 2021.”
of corporate leaders believe their
organization’s communication
is effective
vs
of frontline workers believe their
organization’s communication
is effective
Having organizational leaders without a feedback loop, managers acting as messengers, and workers left to interpret fractured communication from multiple sources, the inefficiencies caused by one-way communication may have finally come to a breaking point.
Insight #4
Technology is valued, but it’s too focused on operationalizing – and not focused enough on enabling
There are big conversations right now around a digital transformation in frontline industries: digitizing the customer experience, the guest experience, and, increasingly, the frontline employee experience. While frontline organizations (especially at the corporate and manager level) agree that technology can solve some of the most pressing issues facing frontlines today, when we delve deeper, strong disconnects arise.
Sentiment on technology use
First, we see a strong disconnect when talking about what organizations are currently doing to leverage frontline technology and solve some of the most urgent challenges disrupting frontlines. But more broadly, we see differing opinions about the specific problems technology can theoretically address. While corporate sentiment is more optimistic about using frontline technology to solve these issues, frontline managers and workers don’t share that optimism, especially when it comes to burnout, bad company culture, and staffing issues.
of corporate leaders believe their
organization invests in new technologies
for frontline workers
vs
of frontline workers believe their
organization invests in new technologies
for frontline workers
Part of the problem is the word technology itself. It can mean very different things to different people. If you ask a retail worker whether technology can solve for employee burnout, perhaps they’ll think of a scanner or self-checkout. If you ask a foodservice worker, maybe they’ll think of mobile apps or self-service kiosks. Can these innovations help solve employee burnout? Can technology pay staff more? Can it help staff who are working multiple jobs to ensure they have enough shifts to get by?
“Organizations need consolidated systems of frontline enablement, not various disparate systems.”
The reality is, frontline technology can address these challenges. But because individual solutions for these challenges exist across a wide field of options, organizations might struggle to make investment decisions without feeling like they need to make significant compromises in other areas, e.g., in order to invest in feedback channels, they might have to reduce their investment in recognition. Organizations want to provide a solution. They want technology to be the solution. But balancing budgets against frontline needs means that organizations need consolidated systems of frontline enablement, not various disparate systems, to avoid compromise and maximize their return on investment.
Insight #5
Training is functional, but dated – and needs to better align with frontline enablement
Training programs in frontline organizations still tend toward “old-school” systems built for deskbound workforces, if at all. Only 44% of corporate respondents and 35% of frontline respondents said they use a learning management system. The real frontline training is happening informally and unstructured.
“It is all just knowledge transfer from one employee to another. We are starting a big push for learning and development – we’re looking at how to get more digital training, more in-depth training. Right now it’s still old school.”
Operations and Logistics Manager
Manufacturing
As a result, 43% of frontline managers and 35% of frontline workers said that a lack of employee training is impacting their day-to-day work. Why? In frontline organizations, where standardization and operational efficiency is top-of-mind, leaning too hard on informal and unstructured training can be a problem. Not unlike top-down communication and unstructured feedback, this approach leads to inconsistencies that can be detrimental to large-scale workforces, if more agile frontline training methods, like in-the-moment training and knowledge transfers, aren’t approached systematically.
Part of that might be due to a disconnect over the availability of training and upskilling. While 29% of workers said they don’t have access to adequate training and upskilling, only 4% of corporate respondents agreed. The suggestion here is that whether or not organizations have robust frontline training programs in place might be beside the point if up to a third of their workforce is unaware of what training opportunities are even available to them. This not only results in inefficiencies and lost opportunities for growth and development, but also costs the organization significantly.
It might be time to rethink the definition of frontline training. What does it include? It can’t just be an annual compliance seminar. It also can’t fall entirely to managers to onboard and train their staff. Revisiting the frontline approach to training can work with, not against, the volatile nature of these industries. For example, with high turnover at the best of times, reimagining onboarding programs to embrace automated, trigger-based systems can reduce the managerial load and improve consistency across locations and regions.
As organizations rethink this concept and how it lives within the frontline enablement ecosystem, the lines between traditional HR-focused L&D, and more operationally focused, on-the-job training, upskilling, and knowledge transfer need to blur to create a new, holistic training ecosystem that’s systematic and scalable to a workforce of thousands.
of frontline workers said they
don’t have access to adequate
training and upskilling
vs
of corporate leaders said
their workers don’t have access
to adequate training and upskilling
Where do we go from there?
This interactive experience is just a taste of our in-depth research into the worker, manager, and corporate leader experience – and what each of these groups need to thrive in the coming year.
In talking with these three cohorts, we’ve uncovered eight key insights that will ignite a discussion around the true definition of frontline enablement. What do deskless and frontline workers truly need to stay happy, productive, and loyal? What do frontline managers need to effectively lead their teams without daily burnout? And what do corporate leaders need to make the data-driven decisions to empower their workforce at scale?
To fully answer these questions – and spark the conversations around the initiatives needed to continue addressing these issues in 2023 – download the full Deskless Report.
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