Closing the technology gap for frontline workers

Authored by John Brownridge and Brad Gray.

The productivity landscape for frontline workers

Frontline workers far outnumber knowledge workers, with an estimated 2.8 billion frontline workers on a global basis.¹ And yet, in the era of digital transformation, when advances in technology are disrupting and transforming work, jobs, organizations, and in some cases whole industries, remarkably, the frontline workers of the world have largely been ignored.

Almost universally, companies have been actively seeking to enhance workforce productivity, boost employee engagement, improve customer satisfaction, and drive profitability by elevating their employees’ digital experience. While the benefits of digital workplace transformation are clear for knowledge workers, many companies struggle to extend these benefits to their frontline workers, who often lack the digital tools, technology, and resources that their office-based and hybrid-work colleagues have access to. This is a problem, as frontline workers interact with customers daily—in some cases, constantly—and play a critical role in delivering products and services to customers, essential to the success and productivity of the business. Frontline workers may include employees in industries, such as retail, health care, hospitality, industrials, and transportation, among others. These workers may perform a wide range of tasks, including patient care, emergency response, customer service, sales, delivery, maintenance, and more.

Frontline workers have historically been underserved regarding digital tools and solutions, exposing the inequity of experience across the workforce. Shifts in the economic climate and workforce trends have created a challenging environment for engaging and retaining frontline workers. Only 23% of frontline workers believe they have access to the technology they need to be productive,² and 80% of frontline employees say that their company provides few connection opportunities at work.³ In addition to limited digital literacy and access, the lack of integration between digital tools and existing workflows and poor user design can create additional work for frontline workers and make it harder for them to perform their jobs. For example, if a hospital rolls out a new electronic health record (EHR) system for nurses to use but does not appropriately design the experience for how nurses need it to work, both the workload of nurses and the potential for data entry errors into patient records would increase, with potentially dire consequences.

The opportunity

Organizations can achieve tangible benefits by elevating the frontline worker digital experience and empowering their frontline workforce with the technology, tools, and information required for the job. Investment in the frontline digital experience will drive improvements across employee engagement, customer satisfaction, and profitability.

Overall, the opportunity for enabling the digital workplace for frontline workers is to create a more efficient, productive, and customer-focused organization, with a workforce that is empowered to deliver exceptional service and value.

Art of the possible

There are several opportunities to provide a leading and integrated digital experience in the flow of work driving employee experiences and business outcomes. Through the eyes of a nurse, a retail worker, and a manufacturing employee, let us look at three examples of how to provide a best-in-class digital experience that meets the frontline in the flow of work.

How do frontline worker technology solutions drive outcomes?

Enabling the digital workplace for frontline workers requires a thoughtful approach that reflects the unique needs of this group. Organizations looking to transform the digital workplace for their frontline workers should start by focusing on the desired business outcomes and experiences instead of starting with technology capabilities and solutions. Frontline worker technology solutions can drive a variety of outcomes that benefit both the workers and the organization, from increased productivity and efficiency to improved safety and customer experience. Below are some examples:

• Improved productivity and performance: Technology allows frontline workers to be more accurate and efficient in data handling, improving data quality and building the right behaviors on data management.
• Boosted customer experience: Technology can help frontline workers provide a more personalized, efficient, and high-quality service to customers, boosting both customer experience and satisfaction.
• Building capability: Workers can upskill through gamification and incentivized learning, and organizations can gather real-time data to understand competencies and provide more targeted training.
• Improved worker health and safety: Organizations can confirm worker location in the event of an emergency or incident to keep workers out of harm’s way, conduct better investigations, and embed a culture of safety.

Before you start: Putting the right foot forward

Organizations should consider the following when preparing to transform the frontline digital workplace.

Take a step back

• Investigate and understand the problem: Leaders should take a step back and seek to truly understand the challenges faced by their frontline workers, using design thinking methods such as ethnographic research and workforce sensing.
• Ensure the total experience is being addressed: Designing a digital workplace that addresses the total experience (versus limited to piecemeal solutions) is key to successfully delivering on a leading frontline digital workplace experience.

Create space for all

• Involve the frontline workers: Build teams that involve frontline workers and their managers every step of the way, creating a productive culture of experience by empowering workers to play a part in the transformation of their own digital workplace experience.
• Form cross-enterprise teams: Teams created to address frontline digital workplace challenges should be integrated across the enterprise, with representation from across the business.

Design for sustained adoption

• Design adaptable and adoptable solutions: Taking time to design solutions that are adoptable by putting the worker at the center when designing and deploying frontline solutions is critical for success.
• Build in the flow of work: Invest in thoughtfully embedding technology and digital experiences into the flow of work for frontline workers, delivering those experiences through intuitive and personalized workflows to drive sustained adoption.

Overall, enabling the digital workplace for frontline workers is a complex and challenging process, but it is essential for companies that want to stay competitive and agile in today’s ever-changing technology world. By taking a thoughtful and strategic approach, companies can successfully empower frontline workers to be more productive, efficient, and effective in delivering products and services to customers.

Authors:

• John Brownridge
• Brad Gray

Endnotes:

¹ Gartner, “What does a human employee value proposition look like for frontline workers?,” ThinkCast, March 22, 2022.
² Sanchit Mullick, “Digital transformation and the forgotten frontline worker,” Infosys, July 29, 2020.
³ Aaron De Smet, Drew Goldstein, and Ruth Imose, “Inclusive workplaces focus on management practices that matter, not fluff,” McKinsey & Company, June 1, 2021.
⁴ Lakeside, Digital Workplace Productivity Report 2022, 2022.
⁵ Unily, “Bridge the gap: 4 ways to unlock frontline employee engagement,” September 18, 2019.
⁶ Nehal Nangia, Mike Kemp, and David Mallon, High impact workforce Research: In brief, Deloitte 2020.
⁷ Kristine Dery and Ina M. Sebastian, “Building business value with employee experience,” MIT CISR Research Briefing no. XVII-6, June 15, 2017.
⁸ Erica Volini et al., 2019 Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends, Deloitte Insights, 2019.
⁹ Barbry McGann, “Why frontline workers must be part of your digital transformation,” Workday, accessed August 10, 2023.