Employee engagement links to your bottom line. Frontline employees who are engaged in their work, rather than merely showing up, are happier workers who will stay with the company longer. Frontline workers who are engaged with their company's core values will push those values forward to their everyday tasks and customer interactions. And it's those positive customer experiences that impact your bottom line.
Employee engagement can be more challenging when your workforce consists of deskless workers, such as the frontline in the retail and restaurant industries. But with deskless workers making up 80 percent of the global workforce, it's a challenge that needs to be addressed.
Here are four ways to boost employee engagement for your frontline workers.
Make training mobile
Eliminate or reduce ineffective paper training and inconvenient group training. Replace them with a mobile learning platform. Modern learning ingrates video, quizzes and gamification into interactive learning that is more effective, and delivers it in a format that allows employees to access it from their mobile device, such as phone or tablet, when they are ready to engage. With today's technology, importing your old training or creating new content is easy, more appealing to your workforce, and more convenient for everyone.
Onboarding new employees and engaging them with company values and processes becomes as simple as adding training to their queue so that they can access it from their own mobile device on their own schedule, or right on the job where they are doing the work.
Put employees in control of their career development
Employees will feel empowered when they can advance their career at their own pace. Companies can challenge and engage employees by helping them set career development goals and outlining the training and experience required to get there.
With a mobile workforce enablement platform, employers can define what training is required and make it accessible. Then employees can take each step at their own pace and on their own schedule.
Digitize operational procedures
Frontline employees often don't have easy access to a computer, and printed procedures can slow down workers who are on the move and need hands free to do their work. But contacting a supervisor to ask questions can also be time-consuming and frustrating.
Digitizing operational checklists and product information allows employees to access information when and where they need it, right on the device they use for their work. Having direct access to information at their fingertips allows employees to be more engaged in their work and to be more confident and successful in their job.
Create open communication to and from the front line
Front line employees often feel disconnected. They typically don't have company email and aren't working in a group with coworkers. But they still want to know what's going on.
Getting information to and from your deskless workforce is important to helping them feel engaged and committed to their job and the company. And since they are typically your face to customers, aligning their work with corporate goals and core values is critical.
Successful internal communication enables messaging in all directions. This includes from the corporate office directly to your individual workers, from workers up to managers, and side-to-side among coworkers. Encouraging communication in all directions allows employees to collaborate. This creates an environment that encourages front line employees to take part in addressing problems and sharing solutions. It allows your front line to work as a team, which boosts their satisfaction and engagement in their work. Download the e-book, "State of Internal Communications for Frontline Employees" to get a checklist for effective internal communication strategies..
Link to the why of your work
From interview, to training, to everyday work tasks, engage employees by giving them the why. This means tying your corporate communications and all underlying operations procedures to the company's core values. If you keep your core values at the forefront of all you do, employees will better see how they contribute to those values.
Today's employees want more than a paycheck from their job. They want to engage in work that feels meaningful, in a place where they feel a sense of belonging. By providing effective training and career development, easy access to information and communication, you will make your front line workers feel like valued members of your team. And employees that feel engaged in their work and valued by the company will create the positive customer experiences that drive your company's success.
