Use Workplace Culture to Stop Frontline Worker Churn

The business world learned to adapt when the pandemic triggered the remote and hybrid work megatrend. Then people grew accustomed to the benefits provided by these new work formats. So when the health crisis subsided, CEOs who issued “back-to-the-office” mandates faced standoffs with employees reluctant to give up their newfound flexibility.

As a result, people quit their jobs in droves to pursue careers with more options. This “Great Resignation” set the stage for a renewed talent war. And many companies that pivoted to make remote and hybrid roles standard options are now navigating with a reimagined workforce.

But what about the people who never left the workplace?

The turnover landslide also includes frontline and deskless workers who must perform their work on-site. Many of these vital employees are quitting because their organizations make no effort to keep them engaged. They felt taken advantage of during the pandemic and now feel ignored as their employers scramble to reconfigure operations to appease remote staff.

What’s Causing Frontline Fallout?

Joseph Fuller and Manjari Raman warn that turning a blind eye to frontline workers is a costly mistake. The two management experts from Harvard Business School studied the topic for several years as part of the school’s Project on Managing the Future of Work. Their in-depth Harvard Business Review article outlines the errors businesses have long made regarding frontline workers.

For example, the authors report that companies point to various reasons behind their frontline attrition, including the pandemic, stimulus checks, and the mindset that high churn is inevitable in such jobs. But they conclude that these factors aren’t why most of these workers started to march out the door. They explain:

“The real problem lies in the way that organizations mismanage their hourly workers. They are underinvesting in those employees and harming their own strategic interests.”

Fuller and Raman provide a list of ways companies are missing the mark:

• They fail to recognize this workforce segment’s crucial role in executing their strategies.
• They don’t measure the hidden costs of constant churn.
• They don’t implement management practices that could improve engagement and productivity.

And they note a significant imbalance of support for frontline workers versus salaried staff, even though hourly employees comprise more that 40 percent of the U.S. labor force.

5 Pitfalls Companies with Frontline Workers Should Avoid

Fuller and Raman highlight mistakes companies with frontline workers should avoid in their article. And they stress that organizations that course correct to address these issues are better positioned to build a loyal, high-performing team. They counsel company leaders to avoid the following errors:

1. Not recognizing that frontline workers want to stay with them.

Many business leaders conclude that frontline churn is due to the difficult, dirty, repetitive, or dangerous work these jobs involve. While these conditions factor into turnover, the primary reason frontline workers leave is misguided or poorly executed management practices.

In fact, Fuller and Raman’s studies show that lower-wage frontline workers are “strongly predisposed to stay with their current employer.” The nature of these jobs doesn’t necessarily lead to inevitable turnover, but how workers are treated does.

2. Underestimating the importance of location and stability.

Unlike employees who have remote work options, job location is very important to many frontline employees. Over 64 percent of these workers said they’d stick with jobs with an easy commute that saved them money and time. And a majority of frontline workers value stability over uncertainty. They aren’t comfortable with the disruption of job hopping.

In addition to a sturdy paycheck, proximity and security are priorities for these employees. But Fuller and Roman found that many companies fail to recognize the significance of these basic needs. So they miss opportunities to enhance their value, establish more permanence, and build stronger ties with their people.

3. Underestimating workers’ goodwill.

Even though front-line and lower-wage workers often perform an organization’s toughest tasks, many hold their employers in high regard. Almost half of the people Fuller and Roman polled said they would recommend their current job to a friend.

But the authors point out that many leaders don’t make any effort to ask frontline workers for their opinion. “This surprisingly large reservoir of goodwill represents an enormous and invaluable asset that companies ignore to their own detriment.”

4. Not initiating career discussions.

The Harvard Business School survey revealed that businesses need to do a better job of systematically helping hourly or frontline workers advance in their careers. For example, many assert that employees should take the initiative if they want upward mobility. But workers in this group are often reluctant to ask for growth opportunities because they don’t want to alienate management or jeopardize their job security.

The authors also found that employers aren’t providing substantive feedback about how to do their current jobs better. They write:

“More than 50 percent of the workers we surveyed reported that their managers had not discussed what skills they should develop to improve their performance and boost their chances for advancement. And only 55 percent said they’d ever had a supervisor or a mentor who helped them succeed.”

Consequently, many frontline and hourly workers quit their jobs in search of opportunities to advance. But instead of helping these employees get ahead and benefiting from their increased expertise, companies wind up starting over with green recruits.

5. Disregarding frontline workers’ strategic importance.

Companies often go all out to attract and retain salaried and higher-tiered employees. They know that having top talent is vital to remain competitive in the marketplace. But these same organizations often overlook that they need dependable, hourly frontline workers for the same reason. These companies’ leaders may think everyone is handled similarly, but their frontline teams disagree.

This disconnect is thwarting these companies’ strategic interests. They may have policies and practices to attract and retain frontline workers, but they need to do a better job of following through on them.

5 Ways to Help Frontline Workers Thrive

A McKinsey analysis of more than 16,000 workers showed that the most important factors leading to job satisfaction were interpersonal relationships and having an interesting job. These things ranked far higher than peoples’ pay levels.

The most effective way to reduce frontline churn is to connect with and motivate these critical workers and empower them to excel. To achieve these goals, McKinsey experts Tera Allas and Brooke Weddle stress the importance of leaders meeting frontline workers’ psychological needs and weaving solutions into their workplace culture.

They recommend that leaders:

• Recognize that workers’ circumstances vary significantly in different jobs and teams and are often very different from those of leaders.
• Analyze how effectively psychological needs are being met in each type of job and each part of the organization, benchmarking performance to peers and best practices.
• Identify how psychological needs can be better satisfied—typically through changes in company culture, behaviors, and day-to-day working practices.
• Act by creating initiatives, projects, and processes to help make workers feel more masterful in jobs that are, as much as possible, more skills-based, autonomous, connected, interesting, or purposeful.

Allas and Weddle tell leaders to focus on employee engagement by encouraging practical behaviors through mindsets, communication, role modeling, training, and performance-management processes. And they recommend five practices that leaders and immediate line managers can use to generate positive returns.

1. Recognize competence.
   People want to be acknowledged and appreciated for what they do. The authors suggest offering frequent strength-based feedback and regularly thanking people for a job well done. They recommend making the most of workers’ skills by giving them stretch assignments that allow them to grow.
   
   
2. Grant autonomy.
   It’s essential to help these employees understand and feel involved in achieving team goals. Leaders can accomplish this by asking for and listening to their frontline workers’ opinions and giving them discretion in appropriate decisions.
   
   
3. Build connections.
   Leaders can strengthen engagement by helping team members build personal connections at work. They suggest scheduling regular breaks and events for socializing to encourage camaraderie. And it’s vital to ensure that they create an environment rooted in respect and inclusion.
   
   
4. Instill meaning.
   Managers should help people understand the “why” behind their work so they’ll be more vested in their jobs. They can also make the work more meaningful by upskilling their direct reports so they can perform more complex, interesting, or varied tasks.
   
   
5. Discuss purpose.
   Connecting people’s work with the big picture incentivizes them. Leaders should find ways to convey the company’s impact on the broader community. And managers should talk to employees individually to find out what gives them a sense of purpose and how they can act upon it in their jobs.

After implementing these practices into play, leaders should monitor and evaluate the results as reflected in employee wellbeing and commercial outcomes.

The basis of all this activity is treating people like human beings, not cogs in a wheel. In maintaining this mindset, employers will not only improve their employees’ work experiences, but they will strengthen their organization’s stability and financial health.

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