This is the first article in a two-part series, identifying the importance of frontline workers and the necessity to include them in corporate communications through services such as LiveTiles Reach.
In any industry, there are few employees as vital as frontline workers. From construction workers, medical professionals, to customer service specialists, frontline workers are crucial on the ground floor of a company’s operations. They are often the first people customers interact with, representing the first impression of an organization. While a company’s office staff is working hard to explore ideas and highlight the logistics of a plan, frontline workers are the engine that puts a company’s ideas into action. It is for this reason that corporate communication tools such as LiveTiles Reach have been designed to provide equal access to corporate communications for all of a company’s employees.
The Frontline is Left Behind
Despite their importance to the success of a company, frontline workers are often the employees that are the most disconnected from a company’s internal communications. A recent survey found that 86% of employees feel connected to their direct coworkers but only 14% feel connected to their business head office, and just 3% feel connected to their C-Suite. Since frontline workers are performing technical, physical, and time-consuming tasks, they do not always have the time to sit at a desk and check news, messages, and emails on a computer. In fact, while on the job some frontline workers may not have access to a desk or equipment to access company news at all. For some, their only access to corporate news is a notice on a lunch room bulletin board or a letter mailed to their home.
The challenges faced by frontline workers feeling disconnected from the rest of their fellow employees have existed prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, aspects of the workplace are increasingly taking place online, and the ways employees communicate, collaborate, and even socialize, are being facilitated by virtual platforms and services. HR Magazine reports that 43% of frontline leaders reported missing important information from head office at a time when information sharing is vital. For this reason, the disconnected feelings of frontline workers have only been amplified by the pandemic.
Why is Communication to Frontline Workers Important?
There is an assumption that, because frontline workers are given clear directives from their employers, there is less of a need for them to be involved with the daily internal communications and planning of the company. Frontline workers know their job and what needs to be accomplished, right?
While this may be the case, finding a way to connect frontline workers to their fellow employees on every level of a company can be beneficial in two main ways:
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- It will increase the number of people feeling connected to the leadership and boast morale. When a business uses collaboration tools, the number of people feeling connected to the leadership more than doubles, according to surveys from workplace.com.
- It will provide the company with new sets of data to analyze to increase the efficiency of operations. One in four people said their ideas were stifled because of poor communication. This highlights the need for management to gather data from frontline workers both directly and indirectly. Organizations need a platform for workers to capture and share these valuable ideas whenever they arise.
With Unity Comes Higher Morale and Greater Efficiency
Allowing frontline workers to be active participants and recipients of a company’s internal communications will yield a variety of benefits. The inclusion and unification of all company employees from the top down will help establish a unified culture throughout the company that will boost morale, increasing worker motivation while also reducing turnover rates.
Furthermore, giving frontline workers the ability to communicate with all company employees also enables them to communicate with their fellow frontline workers more easily, which helps increase the efficiency of their daily tasks.
Rethinking the Role of the Frontline Worker
In the past, there have been technology limitations that have made it difficult to provide frontline workers with access to corporation communications. These barriers are being overcome, and new technologies are emerging that are less cost prohibitive.
Makers of employee engagement software, such as LiveTiles, urge companies to not simply view frontline workers as employees but, rather, to view these workers as invaluable assets to the company as they’re firsthand knowledge of the customer needs is second to none. Frontline workers have access to information that cannot instantaneously be gained from within a company’s office. They are the first workers to observe customer responses to new initiatives, and they have first-hand experience in knowing what does and does not work when a company begins to put its theories into practice.
By opening lines of communication between all employees in a company, company executives can receive instantaneous updates from frontline workers and can quickly adapt and finetune a game plan moving forward.
The Time is Now
Many companies may be hesitant to invest in a new communications tool due to uncertainty and budgeting concerns. However, now that companies around the world have been forced to reckon with concepts of work increasingly moving online, the transition to adopting intranet services and digital corporate communications tools is inevitable. While your organization tries to decide which digital services to invest in and which ones to avoid, this is an opportunity to choose new communications tools that are inclusive to all of your employees in unprecedented, unifying ways. Learn more about the power dedicated employee communication apps are bringing to frontline staff, as well as other parts of the organization here.
The second part of this series will detail the features of products such as LiveTiles Reach, along with things to keep in mind while you consider in integrating a new corporate communications tool into your company’s culture.
Elantis can help answer your questions about which corporate communication tools are right for you. Contact us today!
