Why frontline staff training matters
Frontline employees are often the first point of contact between a business and its customers. Their performance directly impacts customer satisfaction and brand perception. In some industries, such as manufacturing, they are directly responsible for the safety and quality of your product.
All in all, they have a major impact on the overall health of an organization.
As well as an enhanced customer experience, some of the other major benefits of effective frontline staff training include:
- A reduction in errors
- Improved compliance
- Increased engagement
- Higher retention
- Operational efficiency
However, many enterprises struggle to reap these benefits due to poor frontline training methods. Communication also appears to be lacking – Unily’s recent research of frontline workers showed that 55% weren’t even aware of training opportunities, and 56% thought training communication was inadequate.
Disconnected and disengaged:
The economic cost of frontline friction
This guide covers the importance of a solid frontline professional learning management approach, along with best practice tips.
Traditional frontline professional learning management systems: the challenges
Traditional frontline Learning Management Systems (LMS) have drawbacks. They can be hard to access on the job and are disconnected from people’s daily workflows. Here are some of the key challenges enterprises face with frontline staff training.
Limited time at desks
Frontline employees typically don’t sit at desks – they’re on their feet serving customers, managing inventory, or operating equipment. Carving out time for computer-based or in-person training can be difficult, especially during busy shifts.
High staff turnover
Industries like retail, hospitality, and healthcare can face high turnover rates, which means constant onboarding of new staff. This puts a burden on HR teams to consistently deliver high-quality training at scale.
Fragmented communication channels
Frontline teams often work across multiple locations and time zones, and in many cases, this leads to disparate communication channels. This could lead to some of the issues in training communication that Unily’s study highlighted. In fact, that same study also showed that 32% of manufacturing workers still relied on word-of-mouth for accessing information. This can cause serious gaps in communication due to things like human error or people simply not being in the right place at the right time.
Low engagement with traditional LMS tools
Many traditional Learning Management Systems (LMS) aren’t designed with frontline users in mind. This makes the systems hard to navigate – reducing engagement and making training ineffective and frustrating.
Disconnect from company culture
Frontline workers are often the last to receive updates and can feel disconnected from the wider company culture. When this occurs, their engagement with training will naturally drop – so organizations should also look to fix the root cause of disconnect.
We recently published an in-depth guide on this to help you!
The core elements of frontline staff training
1. Role-relevant learning paths
In general, frontline employees want their employee experience to be personalized – just as they get with the consumer experience. For example, 28% of respondents to Unily’s research said they wanted communications to be tailored to their role and location.
The same should apply to frontline staff training. Whether it’s health and safety compliance or point-of-sale procedures, try to map it to the unique responsibilities of each frontline role. This also helps them see a clear career path based on the area they work in.
Unily Customers are able to use Employee Journeys to hyper-personalize what people see – not just based on role or location, but also where they are in the employee lifecycle.
2. Mobile-friendly training
Due to the lack of time frontline workers have at a desk, and the difficulties of finding time for in-person training, delivering this through a user-friendly employee app can be helpful. This doesn’t need to exist in a silo – you can complement mobile-based training with occasional in-person sessions. You should also ensure that things like your Employee Experience Platform (EXP) are mobile-first, and can very easily signpost people to relevant training.
3. Seamless onboarding
While training is an ongoing thing throughout an employee’s tenure, it actually starts with a streamlined employee onboarding experience. This helps new hires get up to speed quickly and confidently – and if the onboarding has gone well, they’re more likely to engage with future training materials.
Check out our guide to frontline onboarding for more tips:
4. Microlearning
This tailors frontline staff training to the variable shift patterns frontline workers have. Microlearning breaks everything down into short, focused bursts – empowering workers to learn at their own pace, while also absorbing the critical information. Consider engaging, bite-sized training modules that frontline workers can consume during downtime, on breaks, or in between shifts.
5. Regular frontline training content
Your frontline staff training should support continual learning. Ensure content is always being added and encourage employees to upskill regularly. You can also use certifications, company-wide shoutouts, and gamification to push a growth mentality across all departments.
6. Just-in-time learning
Don’t think of frontline staff training as separate to the day-to-day. The ability to access training materials and learn new things in real-time – without leaving the flow of work – is just as important as one-off courses. For example, Unily’s EXP enables just-in-time learning through searchable knowledge hubs and best practice sharing – all embedded into the frontline digital workplace.
Measuring frontline staff training
Investing in frontline staff training is only as valuable as the outcomes it delivers. It shouldn’t be seen as a box ticking exercise – organizations should measure success both in terms of training adoption, and through the impact it has on wider business goals. Here are some quantitative and qualitative metrics.
Training completion rates
This is the most basic of metrics, telling you whether employees are finishing required training. However, it’s only the beginning – after all, high completion doesn't always mean high comprehension.
Knowledge retention and skill application
Use quizzes and scenario-based assessments to see how well employees have absorbed the training information. You can then add on-the-job performance checklists to gauge whether they can apply what they’ve learned to real-world situations.
Improvement in organizational KPIs
For companies with large frontline workforces, things like customer satisfaction or units produced or delivered will be critical strategic goals. See how these measure up after training has been completed – ideally, you’ll see an uptick. These organizations are also likely to have safety training as a big part of their program – so track safety incident rates as well.
Employee sentiment
Qualitative employee feedback – gathered through things like pulse surveys, comments, and your frontline app – provides an insight into how training is being perceived and where it can be improved.
Frontline staff retention
Link training data to internal mobility and retention data. Are trained employees staying longer? Are they advancing into leadership roles? This is where you can demonstrate the quality of your frontline professional learning management – and its contribution to long-term talent development.
The strategic role of EXPs for frontline staff training
Modern enterprises need to not only deliver effective frontline staff training, but also connect employees to the broader mission and goals.
Employee Experience Platforms bridge this gap by serving as a centralized hub. Even if you have a separate frontline LMS, integrating it with an EXP ensures it doesn’t sit within a silo. Your EXP acts as the single source of truth for your business goals, and it can then direct people to relevant training.
Here are some other advantages of integrating your EXP with your frontline staff training.
- Training can be part of the daily workflow, not an isolated activity
- Mobile-first accessibility means you can meet frontline workers where they are
- Communications can be personalized – meaning employees get sent to role-relevant training
- Feedback loops enable employees to provide input on training effectiveness, so you can refine where needed
- Recognition features enable you spotlight achievements and offer digital badges for course completions
- In-depth analytics can help you tie training and business goals together
In a nutshell, a modern EXP elevates frontline professional learning management – from a system of compliance to a strategic driver of performance and productivity.
Kerzner International is a leading developer and operator of luxury resorts and private homes, with over 15,000 employees worldwide across multiple brands and nationalities. The business offered excellent4ed internal and external training, but as these were decentralized, awareness of these was low.
By integrating training with their Unily platform – iKonnect – Kerzner now have a home for what is an industry-leading L&D program. Resources are fully integrated into the mobile application and colleagues have specific learning plans, which is reflected in the content displayed within the platform.
The key takeaway
Investing in frontline staff training helps from both an employee and organizational perspective. It empowers individuals to upskill and get the most out of their careers, while delivering high performance and long-term value for the business.
With the right tools and approach, you can help your frontline teams thrive and deliver business goals – at the speed which is critical in today’s fast-paced landscape.
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