Checklist: Create an Engagement Strategy for Frontline Workers

The day-to-day work life of a frontline employee might look pretty different from their desk-based colleagues. Chances are, they’ll spend less time checking the email and instant messaging programs that keep office- or home-based employees connected to the company’s mission, culture, and community.

Maybe you’ve (wisely) set up a company email address for every employee in your organization, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they have the time in their work day to catch up on important communications. That small difference can lead to frontline employees feeling isolated or disconnected, putting a huge dampener on their overall engagement.

Every company that has ‘deskless’ employees needs a clear engagement strategy that addresses the unique needs of people working in those types of positions. While many elements of a general employee engagement strategy are relevant, People leaders also need to take into consideration the working environment, schedules, time, and tools that frontline workers operate within.

In this article, I’ll look at four key steps that people leaders can take to create an effective engagement strategy that helps frontline workers feel connected to the rest of the company.

1. Assess current engagement levels and set goals

If you’ve read this far, it’s probably because you’re already aware that your frontline engagement could use a boost. Maybe this is because you’ve seen turnover rates creeping up. Perhaps productivity has slipped on certain teams. Or there could just be a sense of general unrest – a vibe, if you will.

Setting specific, measurable goals can help inform decisions about what your engagement strategy should include. Avoid pinning these goals to a concrete timeline, and instead just aim for improvements with a commitment to monitor progress and reassess periodically.

Where engagement is concerned, it can take a long time to see significant improvements, so take that into consideration when you think about how often to measure engagement levels.

2. Create feedback mechanisms

As much as possible, it’s helpful to back up your hypotheses with data. Survey your frontline employees – formally and informally – to find out how they feel about their jobs, their coworkers, their managers, and the culture. 

Implement (or utilize existing) tools that help you keep a finger on the pulse of your frontline employee population. Ask what the company can do to make their job easier, better, more satisfying, and even fun.

3. Identify areas for improvement

While many companies conduct employee feedback surveys and gather intel on how their workforce feels, some make a crucial error by stopping there.

Don’t do that.

The whole point of collecting feedback from employees is to put that information to work for you. After all, your employees can easily tell you where the problems are and, in many cases, offer possible solutions.

Look for themes in feedback from frontline employees, whether that’s a lot of people talking about the same problems, or spikes in certain issues related to other events (like elevated reports of stress and burnout during a new product launch or other big deadline-oriented project).

Use this data, along with the goals you set earlier, to bring your strategy into focus.

4. Create a strategy and plan

Any effective strategy relies on outlining specific actions that help you progress toward goals. To engage frontline employees, you must understand the challenges and constraints that come with their positions, hear about their experiences in those roles, and figure out which pain points you can relieve now versus those that might require a longer timeline, bigger investment, or other resources.  

Recognizing the power and influence of managers, Gallup suggests a strong need to engage frontline managers in order to boost engagement with the rest of frontline teams. Generally, this means making sure your frontline managers have the tools, knowledge, and resources they need to succeed, whether that’s technical training or support developing soft skills.

Using the accompanying checklist, you can work through all the necessary steps to build an effective engagement strategy for all the frontline employees in your organization. (Click the image to enlarge and download!)