10 Ways to Connect Frontline Workers With Your Company Strategy + Vision

Connecting desk-based employees with your strategy and vision can be hard enough, but when it comes to trying the same with frontline workers, it’s an altogether new ball game.

Your people on the ground have a different communication culture, needs, and expectations. As such, your communications plan needs to carefully consider the specific requirements of this audience.

In this article, I’ll cover 10 ways you can engage frontline workers with your strategy and vision, with a quick and immediately actionable tip for each one.

1. Make it relevant

Often, strategy and vision are conceived in head office meeting rooms, with little, if any, feedback from frontline workers incorporated. As a result, it can be hard for those employees to understand what the strategy and vision are, and their important role in delivering it. 

That’s why your priority should be taking an audience-first approach. Put the strategy and vision into the context of the frontline for them, and talk about it in their language. 

Quick tip 

Remove corporate jargon. If necessary, re-write the strategy in words the frontline will appreciate and that will resonate with them.

2. Get personal

Frontline workers play the leading part in the delivery of your strategy, so you need to be explicit in tying their day-to-day work to your vision. Frontline employees need to see their individual jobs reflected in your strategy, so they can join the dots, understand how they fit in, and feel a sense of pride and purpose. 

Quick tip

Use relatable examples from their world. For example, talk about how customer service impacts the success of the business, and hence the delivery of the strategy.

3. Tell stories

As humans, we’re pre-programmed to remember stories better than facts, figures, or perfectly crafted words on a slide. This is even more important for frontline workers, whose

communication culture is verbal, not written. So, if you want to get engagement, you need to think like an eager journalist and source the best stories from your frontline.
Real-life examples from their world that show the strategy in action are more powerful than any PowerPoint. 

Quick tip

Spend time in the field, build relationships, and support and encourage your workers to tell their stories in their own words.

4. Senior leadership visibility

A common complaint among frontline workers is that they are invisible to senior leaders.

When it comes to vision and strategy, your leaders are the ones who will have created it. But to engage the frontline, they need to get their hands dirty. That means visiting the shop floor, being face-to-face with employees, sharing their vision, and inviting feedback. 

This helps humanize the strategy, sends a clear message that you value the frontline, and provides an opportunity to model the behaviors you want to see.  

Quick tip 

Organize regular senior leadership roadshows so your executives are frequently visible, accessible, and engaged with the frontline.

5. Empower line managers

Frontline workers rely on their line managers for direction on everything from strategy to shift patterns. Team leaders are the connective tissue in your organization, and are the ones best placed to translate your strategy and vision into reality for their teams.

Indeed, 61% of frontline workers find company communication most useful when it comes from their direct manager. 

To help team leaders do this effectively, and strengthen organizational alignment, you need to give them training and tools. 

Quick tip

Don’t assume managers will automatically be able to connect the dots for their teams. Involve them early in strategy briefings with senior leaders so they can ask questions, get guidance, and know where to go for support.

6. Take a multi-channel approach

Just as you cannot think of strategy and vision communications as one and done, you also need to use multiple channels to reach frontline workers. 

Some of your people may be out in the field for long periods with infrequent face-to-face time with their line manager. Consider using mobile-first channels, like an employee experience platform, to help the frontline stay up to date and connected.

Quick tip 

Make sure any mobile platform is customizable, so the frontline gets strategy updates that are context-specific, quickly and easily.

7. Make them memorable

If you want any of your employees, and especially your frontline workers, to connect with your strategy and vision, then they must be memorable. 

This means crystallizing your messages into a short, simple, and inspirational one-liner.

Every great strategy should be summarizable in this way. Here’s Amazon’s, for example: ‘Provide the best customer experience by offering a wide selection of products with fast, reliable delivery’. 

Quick tip 

Visuals can help you. Whether you use words to conjure images or actual visuals (like posters), pictures really do speak a thousand words.

8. Repetition, repetition, repetition

As leadership guru Zig Ziglar said, “Repetition is the mother of learning.” 

For messages to stick, they need to be heard many times. That’s why it’s essential that you regularly communicate your strategy and vision to the frontline. They should be referred to as much as possible, whether that’s in daily stand-up meetings, shift switchovers, or Town Halls. 

Not only does this help with message recall, it also boosts motivation, which will further connect your frontline workers to your strategy. 

Quick tip 

Strategy and vision are a long game, so make sure you have a plan to regularly communicate them over the course of the year, not just at major company milestones like end-of-year results.

9. Recognition and reward

When employees get recognized or rewarded for their achievements, they naturally strive to repeat them. 

So, a great way to get frontline workers connected to your strategy is to celebrate when their actions have supported the delivery of it. Recognizing and rewarding employees who demonstrate the strategy in action will send a powerful message to everyone about the value your organization places on its frontline workers. 

According to Gallup, employees who receive recognition are five times more likely to stay with the company, so this is a surefire way to increase connection and alignment with your strategy and vision.  

Quick tip 

Look at re-designing your recognition and reward programs so they’re explicitly connected to behaviors in support of your strategy and vision.

10. Frequent feedback

Just as you can’t communicate strategy and vision once and expect to be done, you also need to be taking feedback at regular intervals. 

How can you create opportunities within the frontline environment for workers to share their examples of what’s working and what isn’t, and ideas for improvement? 

Listening to your people is a win-win – they feel heard, included, and connected to the company’s success, and you get invaluable insights into how to make your strategy even more actionable at ground level.   

Quick tip 

Don’t over-engineer it. Soliciting feedback can be as simple as having physical or online suggestion boxes or email addresses, or asking managers to summarize team members’ ideas and send them back to head office.

Everyone deserves to emotionally connect with their work

We know that frontline workers are busy serving customers, and their time available to engage with your strategy and vision is short.

However, given the critical role they play in your organization’s success, it’s essential that your comms strategy prioritizes this audience and focuses on their specific needs.

If you take the time to do this right, you will see improvements in alignment, engagement, and performance.