By Cris Grossmann, CEO and co-founder, Beekeeper
Frontline workers are the engine that drives business. Around the world, 80% of all workers serve on the frontline, working in industries such as construction, hospitality, manufacturing and retail.
However, companies are struggling to hire and retain top talent. Frontliners are experiencing rising food, housing and childcare costs due to inflation, causing them to job-hop or take on extra work. Nearly 70% of Americans are looking for a second job to keep up with widespread price increases. Leaders are seeking to engage a multi-generational workforce, including younger staff who have different motivations than their older peers. Nearly half (42%) of Gen Z workers want to do purpose-driven work, and companies are having challenges maintaining the continuity and quality of operations as they struggle to fill key roles. One survey found that across industries 56% of senior executives are experiencing frontline employee turnover that’s higher than historical norms.
Being able to engage and retain talent is key to driving production throughput and product sales, ensuring service quality, and improving customer satisfaction — all of which are vital to maximizing revenues, profitability, and cost savings. Yet, those goals are in jeopardy. A recent report found that nearly a third (31%) of frontline workers consider leaving their job more than once a month. Replacing this many workers harms operations and can cost companies hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars each year.
5 Real-World Strategies to Drive Engagement:
Hotels face workforce and business pressures more than most because they operate around the clock. As such, they typically require hundreds of frontliners to execute key processes flawlessly, from guest check-in and concierge services, to dining and housekeeping. Engaging and retaining workers is thus of utmost importance.
In a recent webinar, Freddie Harmon, vice president of human resources at Viejas Casino and Resort in Alpine, California, and Melissa Lombardo, director of training and quality at the Conrad Hotel in New York Midtown, shared five strategies they have used to drive worker engagement to 78% and above:
1. Adopt modern communication strategies: Top-down communications create delays – and many workers may not ever receive key messages from managers. Using a modern connected workforce solution enables leaders to preschedule content, send broadcast messages to all employees and target communications to specific teams. Most employees have smartphones and can access workforce collaboration tools directly. To reach those who don’t, companies can purchase iPads and install them in key areas, such as meeting and breakrooms.
With digital tools, companies can communicate with team members across shifts; ensure consistency of messages; and provide a central location for company policies, employee handbooks, human resource documents and departmental processes. Managers can share corporate updates and post open shifts workers can bid on.
2. Provide employees with tools that make it easier to do their jobs: Managers and team leads can send short video clips to hand over shifts, ensuring workers are ready to tackle key tasks. They can also use digital communications to reinforce key information, such as arrivals, occupancy levels and VIPs who need special treatment. Companies can further reinforce standards by using their connected workforce solutions to offer daily digital tips, run contests and sell or give away swag.
Visual and text communications like these help inspire the performance a brand is known for: reinforcing classroom and pre-shift learning, provoking friendly competition among workers and teams, creating pride in work and motivating employees to like and comment on each other’s posts. Strategies such as these helped the Conrad Hotel boost engagement with its staff.
3. Digitize low-level tasks: Leading companies want to automate processes to free up managers and frontliners to spend more time on higher-level duties, such as delivering exceptional service and interacting with guests. Connected workforce solutions enable companies to digitize paper-based processes, such as requesting and approving paid time off.
4. Expand recognition: Connected workforce solutions make it easy for managers to recognize workers: offering praise individually or in front of others and sharing promotions. But why not get creative and let workers recognize each other — or their managers?
The Conrad Hotel used this strategy by challenging its team to increase recognition of their colleagues. After the challenge was issued, hotel managers noticed a direct correlation between employee recognition and guest satisfaction scores: the more recognition the staff received, the higher guests scored their overall satisfaction with the service and cleanliness of the hotel.
Viejas Resort combines elements such as print, digital and social sharing to reinforce its standards program. Supervisors and workers hand out cards to celebrate those who maintain exceptional service quality, take photos and post them to an internal communication channel. Everyone at the company can see this recognition, but more importantly, it builds camaraderie within and across teams. At Viejas, daily recognition has quadrupled, inspiring everyone to do their best.
5. Humanizing the worker-employer relationship: Connected workforce solutions enable employers to continue communicating even through challenging events, such as the pandemic, extreme weather and other community developments.
Managers can also use these solutions to publicize other resources, such as text or video tips on internal employee assistance programs and other benefits and external health and wellness apps or training resources.
Tactics like this helped the Conrad Hotel achieve an employee engagement score of 78% in 2022, while the company’s trust score improved by six points.
Viejas Resort humanizes relationships and strengthens communications by collecting employee questions ahead of meetings. Before one important meeting, the brand ended up with 1,000 questions, which it used to identify key themes and shape communications. The company also set up a stream for employees to post pet photos and build community. Conveniently, this also gets team members on the app, where they can easily check out other corporate updates.
Use These Five Strategies to Drive Business Results
In competitive industry environments, everyone is fighting for the same talent, and wages are more or less the same across companies.
What firms can do to differentiate themselves is create a great culture: one where supervisors and teams leverage digital tools to communicate with each other, and brand values and standards are creatively shared and reinforced. In addition, companies can digitize low-level tasks, recognize staff more widely and help people bring their authentic selves to work and share their personal lives.
Connected workforce solutions can help companies achieve all of these goals: attracting, developing and retaining the best employees. That’s a winning strategy in any market and any economic environment.
