Frontline Employee Experience: The Complete Guide for 2025

When we talk about the frontline employee experience, what do we really mean?

We often talk about:

• Productivity and efficiency
• Specialist technology
• Shift coverage

But we should really be talking about:

• Employee experience
• Connectedness to the rest of the business
• Accessibility for all employees regardless of location or job role

Why should we care about the experience of our frontline employees?

That’s an easy one.

They’re the lifeblood of your organization. The boots on the ground. The people on the streets.

Frontline employees are often marginalized and left out of ‘normal’ employee experience programs, but most of the time, they’re the only people your business sees and are the faces most associated with your brand.

When you put it like that, it makes sense to look after them, huh?

And, when you do, you benefit as an organization too. By improving your work environment for all staff, you see employee retention increase and employee satisfaction skyrocket.

But most importantly, every single employee deserves to have a great experience. Here’s our guide to help you make that a reality.

Understanding the unique needs of frontline employees

There are major differences between frontline employees and desk-based workers:

As a result of these differences, there will naturally be unique challenges. When it comes to frontline work, there’s an added pressure on delivering to schedule, handling frustrated customers in person, and getting to the next task.

Common challenges for frontline employees:

• Burnout: Physical tasks with uncertain breaks, long shifts, and the pressure to check in with supervisors lead to physical and mental exhaustion.
• Shortages: In times of unplanned absence and technical failures, existing staff may not be able to cater to customer or schedule demand.
• Attrition: Due to the stress and strain on frontline workers, employee retention is low compared to national averages; leading to more burnout and shortages.

We must also acknowledge there may be external factors outside our control, too. Take the coronavirus pandemic. Who could have planned for the impact on frontline workforce wellbeing?

When things go wrong in the outside world, it’s our frontline staff that bear the brunt of it. While office staff got to work from home, frontline employees’ worlds either became extremely difficult or stopped (often unpaid) altogether.

Core elements of a positive frontline employee experience

To get things right, you must start at the very beginning.

Employee experience, frontline or otherwise, must be a factor in your internal communications strategy and your career development and wellbeing processes.

Use these five components as the pillars of your frontline employee engagement program:

• Onboarding process: Make it obvious that all employees are part of your business, will get access to the resources they need, and will be supported by leadership and peers.
• Motivation in relation to productivity: Reinforcement of positive behavior and help when needed encourages new and existing staff to complete their roles to the best of their ability.
• Work-life balance: Flexible scheduling to address unique needs and preferences.
• Career development opportunities: A clear path to upskilling and climbing the corporate ladder should be laid out before a new frontline employee starts.
• Employee wellbeing & mental health: Ensuring a supportive company culture where staff can go to leadership with work and non-work problems maintains a healthy and productive workforce.

Strategies to empower and engage frontline staff

Once you’ve laid the foundations for a positive frontline employee experience, you must go a step further.

It’s not enough to be seen to look after frontline staff. You must actively encourage the community and camaraderie between individuals and groups.

As McKinsey’s Aaron De Smet says, “Even a leader who is a hard-nosed numbers person should still care about creating an employee experience that helps people reach their full potential.”

Key strategies:

• HR must drive a top-down approach: Company culture must be seen, heard, and lived—inclusive of C-level staff, frontline workers, and desk-based teams.
• Implement asynchronous and real-time digital tools: Keeping employees connected means not just in-the-moment. It must be consistent and across all channels.
• Leverage pulse surveys: Amplify your employee’s voice and be seen to take action on feedback and concerns.
• Put automation in place where it makes sense: Streamline tasks and improve efficiency for frontline workers lacking the spare time to catch up on admin and communications tasks.
• Centralized information resources: Have a single hub for company updates, documentation, and communicating with peers.

For more insights, watch this video: 

Measuring & improving frontline worker experience

Once you’ve implemented your frontline employee experience program and started to encourage participation and usage, now begins the most important time in the process.

Ensuring adoption and that the right outcomes are happening, lean on employee engagement metrics and user satisfaction analytics to gauge the success of your program.

Keep an eye on key metrics

The sum of your overall employee experience will be made up of:

• User satisfaction scores
• Net Promoter Score
• Onboarding completion rates

Then factor in metrics specific to employee experience technology:

• Active intranet users
• Time spent on intranet
• Number of document downloads
• (Successful) search queries
• Discussion forum activity
• Page load time
• Uptime/downtime

For further insights, watch this video:

Always remember employee satisfaction impacts customer satisfaction

A study by the National Library of Medicine found that for each one-star improvement in a company's Glassdoor rating, customer satisfaction scores increased by 1.3 points out of 100.

This correlation makes total sense. When people are happy (and let’s not forget our frontline employees are people, after all), they’re more likely to stay motivated, fix problems, and thrive off productivity.

This isn’t new information, either. According to LinkedIn’s Global Talent Trends Report, it’s all about listening to and acting upon employee feedback. But it’s always been that way.

Companies who put employees first leverage great customer results as a benefit.

Digital tools play a key part too

While a lot of your strategy will revolve around approach and mindset, technology can help speed up the process.

Intranet platforms and employee engagement apps—or preferably one that does both—act as the place where frontline employees stay connected to the rest of your business.

Not only do you get a single source for documentation and information (complete with version and access control), but you also get a place where employees can:

• Receive push notifications for critical alerts
• Consume company podcasts
• Attend or watch back company all-hands
• Leave anonymous feedback
• Praise colleagues for a job well done
• Receive praise for a job well done
• Take part in company social media
• Chat with colleagues in other locations
• Get support for work, family, or financial issues

What’s more, your frontline workers don’t need to find WiFi and a desk to access this, either.

With apps like Workvivo, the mobile experience grants access to the same resources and features as if you were on your laptop.

The future of frontline employee experience

We’re finally at a crossroads where those who look after their frontline employees will thrive and those who keep putting employee experience on the back burner will experience staff attrition.

When you get it right and encourage a positive company culture, where staff are swapping shifts, benefitting from workday flexibility, and feeling connected thanks to digital transformation programs hitting their job role, there’s going to be a monumental impact on your bottom line.

The adaptability to meet evolving frontline worker engagement needs is aided, in no small part, by the technology available in the market today.

Opting to consolidate communication channels, document libraries, and support networks into a single hub is an excellent first move for ensuring the healthy future of your frontline employees’ experience.

Watch this video to learn more:

Great frontline employee experiences start with Workvivo

When we say a “digital hub for everybody”, we mean everybody. And that very much includes your frontline teams.

Having implemented employee engagement solutions for millions of users in businesses reliant on frontline employees, like Evri, Hickory’s Smokehouse, and Mater Private Hospital, Workvivo is comfortably the solution best suited to bringing your teams together.

Workvivo case studies

• Hickory’s Smokehouse

At Hickory’s, there was a goal to connect frontline and office-based staff alike. Enabling two-way communication via a central hub between sites and different worker types was the obvious solution.

Now using Workvivo, Hickory’s has 94% of its 3,000 hospitality staff registered—with a whopping 86% active every month. Since launching in the back end of 2023, post impressions have reached over 2.5 million; demonstrating the adoption and importance of connecting frontline and desk-based employees.

“Workvivo means that people don’t go unnoticed. People are doing a lot of good things at Hickory’s; Workvivo gives us an opportunity to shine a light on this, and to celebrate it as well. Workvivo enhances our culture.”

— John Welsh, Managing Director

Watch the case study:

• Mater Private Hospital

With a legacy intranet in place, there were some clear cracks in internal communications and engagement.

77% of the staff at Mater are now registered Workvivo users, with 75% of those active on a monthly basis. Even with the hectic schedules of frontline hospital staff, over 1,000 posts were uploaded to Workvivo in the first six months of implementation.

Mater has changed its culture across all 10 sites, now focused more on employee recognition and appreciation.

“Traditionally, communication can be challenging in healthcare; a lot of our staff are frontline and don’t always have access to email or large departmental meetings. The Workvivo app has really allowed us to communicate on a very accessible basis.”

— Nikki Kane, COO

Watch the case study:

• Evri

Any logistics company will suffer employee engagement problems. With such an intense focus on delivery rates (720 million per year no less), it’s easy to put customers first and let employees come second.

Since Evri started using Workvivo, however, they’ve had the best of both worlds. 90% of employees are active every month and 53% of employees are using the mobile app.

Now operating with a “digital hub for everybody”, Evri has seen an increase in its employee engagement score of 0.5. It's a measure out of 10, so that's a massive increase across the whole business.

“You can make connections through Workvivo that matter, and that make your life better. And because it's a work application, it's making your work life better.”

— Anita Marquina, Community Delivery Manager

Watch the case study:

Putting frontline employee experience at the top of your agenda

Are you ready to prioritize frontline employee experience in your organization?

Request a free 1:1 demo of Workvivo to see how we can help.