Frontline teams are those people that affect business success directly through their actions, as these are the employees customers get to communicate with first.
Hospitality, health care, manufacturing, transportation and warehousing… all those industries rely on frontline workers to do a lion’s share of a job.
What Is a Frontline Team?
In simple terms, a frontline team is a team of people who communicate with customers directly and are usually their first stop for any bits of information they may need.
How come, then, that frontline workers are usually physically separated from technology and are left with inefficient tools to perform their tremendously important jobs?
This is the main catch, actually, because the efficiency of frontline teams’ skills can propel a business in a good or bad direction.
That’s why it is important to brainstorm ideas and come up with a sustainable strategy on how to build a successful and engaged frontline team.
Communication Comes First
That proper communication is crucial for a team’s development should be clear to anyone who has ever attempted to manage a team.
As mentioned above, frontline teams usually don’t have access to the latest tech, including modern and convenient communication tools. Not even a simple tool to track employee’s hours!
Make sure to encourage communication and set clear guidelines on which channels should be used. Provide proper training if necessary.
Always Offer New Tech
Always offer new tech. The fact that isn’t a standard is devastating really, keeping in mind that frontline workers represent 80% of the global workforce!
According to Microsoft’s Work Trend Index, frontline workers often look for better job prospects because they feel they are underpaid and have a poor work-life balance. 63% of these people are looking forward to job opportunities technology creates, while 56% say they feel pressure to adapt to new technology over fear of losing their jobs while 55% have been forced to learn new tech on their own without any training being provided or offered.
These stats show clearly that new tech must be prioritized but, no less importantly, that proper training programs have to be created.
And with safety so important for frontline teams, one important piece of tech is a workplace safety tool. Software and apps of this nature can not only help with safety, but they can also offer the support that is needed to ensure your employees feel engaged, leading to higher retention rates.
Set in Place a Job Management System
The great majority of frontline workers looking for other job prospects say they have poor relations with the management.
This is a huge no-go!
You can set in place a job management system to make things run smoothly and learn on the go by listening to employee feedback.
As a matter of fact, even though management seems like rocket science, it is clearly outlined, as follows:
- Customer acquisition – Use marketing, advertising, and promotion
- Estimating & quoting – Estimate a cost and ask for customer feedback
- Task outlining – divide the job into smaller tasks
- Scheduling – Allocate the necessary resources and staffing +
- Timesheeting –Record employees’ working hours
- Emailing & document exchange – Dispatch documents relevant to the job to stakeholders
- Cost management
- Work-in-progress management
- Invoicing
- Reporting – Collect the data for further reference
Consider Artificial Intelligence
For frontline workers working in construction, there is an extra mile managers need to go. It is essential to stay up to date with field service trends:
- IoT for asset management
- Cloud-based software for remote work
- Artificial intelligence for business automation
- Inventory management software for supply chains
Keep in mind though, that employees need to be told that AI won’t endanger their jobs positions. As Darryl Willis, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of the energy and sustainability industry says:
“I come across a lot of people who are worried about being replaced by artificial intelligence, by machine learning. One of the things I say to people is that you have to see machine learning and AI as an assistant, not a replacement, for expertise.”
Make Use of Knowledge Management Systems
Knowledge management systems can help you manage frontline teams better, also making their job easier for them.
What is a knowledge management system?
In plain words, it is a platform combined with various processes and people that collects and stores information in a central location. Their main purpose is to make information sharing seamless and keep it circulating.
Modern knowledge management systems integrate with the existing processes and pull data from multiple sources, providing immediate access to information.
Using one such system to help your frontline teams perform better is a perfect opportunity to aid them in their daily activities in desperate need of new tech.
Provide Training for Your Frontline Managers
All of these strategies will be in vain if you fail to provide training for your frontline managers. Just think about a trade business with poor frontline team management and this practice affecting customer care.
Not good.
The main problem here is that classic frontline management training usually consists of theoretical knowledge delivered in a classroom that lacks real knowledge from the field.
A combination of theoretical knowledge and frontline expertise should be established, nourished, and presented to frontline managers from day one, that is to say — starting with onboarding.
Provide Onboarding Training
That being said, all new and transfer hires must be provided with training from the first day they join the company.
Make sure, however, not to overload the employees with too much info as that is certain to be detrimental rather than encouraging.
Nowadays, there are really no excuses for neglecting continual learning. With eLearning and mLearning going strong — and even with some creative techniques like gamification — everyone can keep learning and enjoying the whole affair.
Take your time devising the perfect mixture of programs that will make learning enjoyable and get the message across at the same time.
Lastly, rethink employee schedules. Flexibility should be prioritized, as frontline employees often complain of a lack of free time. Also, make an effort to actually offer career advancements. Frontline workers deserve it!
Key Takeaways
Much is yet to be done and standardized in frontline team management, but every business can start with small steps.
Train your frontline workers and your frontline managers, offer learning opportunities, be flexible, set up proper communication channels, and offer new tech whenever possible.
Don’t let your frontline teams feel like they’re being left behind (as they often do especially compared to, say, remote teams).
Make every effort to make the workplace perfect for your frontline teams and listen to their feedback for additional ideas.
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