Make Every Workday Count w/ Matthew Daniel (Guild), Al Dea (The Edge of Work), Lori Niles-Hofmann (NilesNolen)

Frontline workers continue to grapple with long-standing challenges like burnout and inconsistent support. Axonify’s annual Deskless Report examines these issues in depth, highlighting the most urgent needs and providing actionable insights to help organizations better equip their frontline teams for success.

In this episode, a panel of ITK faves—Matthew Daniel (Guild), Al Dea (The Edge of Work) and Lori Niles-Hofmann (NilesNolan)—and host JD Dillon discuss answers to 5 critical frontline questions:

1. How can we better support managers so they aren’t forced to figure things out on the fly?
2. How can we help employees deal with increasing cases of customer incivility?
3. How can we close communication gaps between corporate and frontline teams?
4. How can we foster community within frontline workplaces?
5. How can we make sure frontline tech investments live up to the hype?

Tune in for practical insights you can use to improve your frontline work experience today. For more about why Axonify is the essential employee enablement solution that equips frontlines with the tools to learn, connect and get things done, visit https://www.axonify.com.

• Download your copy of The Deskless Report 2024: axonify.com/deskless
• Follow our special guests on LinkedIn:
  • Matthew Daniel
  • Lori Niles-Hofmann
  • Al Dea

Transcript

JD Dillon (00:13):
Hi friends, how are you today? That's great to see you. Welcome to the 52nd episode of In the Know, your 25-minute deep dive into the modern employee experience and what we can do to make it better. I'm JD from Axonify and today's episode is totally deskless. Well, I'm actually sitting at a desk right now and there's a pretty good chance that you are sitting at a desk watching this, but the vast majority of people at work, upwards of 70% worldwide, do not typically sit at desks. And that's who we're talking about today. The deskless workforce. You see our team at Axonify conducts ongoing research into the deskless employee experience. We run pulse surveys, conduct round tables and partner with analysts and corporations around the world to understand what is and is not working on the frontline. And then every two years we publish The Deskless Report.
(01:05):
It's a snapshot of the current state of frontline work and this year's report dropped today. So you can check out the report for yourself at Axonify.com/Deskless. We surveyed executives, managers and frontline workers from industries like retail, grocery, hospitality, foodservice and logistics to find out how people feel about the current state of the workplace and what organizations can do to make it better. I have good news and I have less than good news. The good news is that frontline employees are more optimistic today than they were in 2022 when we published our last report. Less people want to quit and less people feel burned out. But here's the thing, we're comparing 2024 to 2022 when pandemic-era disruption was still in full effect. And sure things may be better today, but going from full-on crisis to less bad isn't necessarily a huge win.
(02:02):
There are still lots of ways organizations can improve the work experience for their frontline teams. There are still plenty of disconnects between what corporate thinks is happening and what's really taking place on the frontline every day. And there are still many simple, practical, achievable ways to make every day and every shift a little better for the people who are doing the heavy lifting for our organizations and communities. So today we're going to explore the big themes from the 2024 Deskless Report, and I've invited three of our favorite ITK guests from past episodes to join me for a panel discussion. I also want to hear what you think about this year's Deskless Report and what ideas you have that can help us improve the frontline workplace. So if you're watching live on LinkedIn, get ready to drop your insights and proven practices into the chat.
(02:47):
I'll be asking four audience questions during the episode. And if you drop an answer into the LinkedIn chat, you'll have a chance to grab one of four $50 gift cards we're giving away from one of our frontline partner businesses. And if you do walk away with a gift card after the episode, you need to agree to do something for me. Of course you do. You need to give a big thank you to the frontline worker you interact with while you're using your gift card. Now, I'm sure you're always gracious and thankful for frontline workers, but as you'll see in our report, not everyone is. So think of our gift card giveaway as added motivation to make sure frontline workers get some additional kudos this holiday season. But before we can give away some gift cards, we need to welcome our special ITK guests. Our first guest was literally our first guest on the first episode of ITK. Say hello once again to Matthew Daniel, Senior Principal of Talent Strategy and Mobility at Guild. Hi Matthew.
Matthew Daniel (03:41):
Hello.
JD Dillon (03:43):
Next up, you may remember her from Episode 24 AKA, the Wonka episode. Yes, I once hosted the show dressed like a discount Willy Wonka. Please welcome Lori Niles-Hofmann, Senior Ed Tech Transformation Strategist at NilesNolen.
Lori Niles-Hofmann (03:56):
Thank you for having me.
JD Dillon (03:57):
And finally, this gentleman helped us unleash our career potential in Episode 30. And yes, I wore a costume for that one too. Please welcome back the founder of The Edge of Work, Al Dea. Al, how's it going?
Al Dea (04:08):
Great to be here, JD. 
Matthew Daniel (04:10):
Look, if I knew costumes were a thing, I would've worn my Hook costume.
JD Dillon (04:14):
And it's two days before Halloween. I felt though the topic of conversation and going full costume may be a mismatch for this particular episode, I'll make it up to everybody in the future.
Lori Niles-Hofmann (04:26):
I'll try with the cat ears. How about that?
JD Dillon (04:28):
There you go. There you go. So thanks again everybody for joining us. We're going to keep, as you can tell, the conversation pretty informal. So I've created a list of five questions based on the five key insights from this year's Deskless Report. And I'll pose each question to the group. We'll spend a few minutes reflecting on that topic and how we can help frontline teams overcome related challenges. So at any point, feel free to jump in, add on to one another's points or disagree if you feel differently about a topic. And remember, if you're watching live on LinkedIn, get ready to answer our special audience questions for each topic for a chance to grab a $50 gift card. So the first insight from The 2024 Deskless Report is that it's time to go all in on empowering frontline managers. According to Gallup, managers account for 70% of the variance in team engagement on the frontline.
(05:11):
They influence every part of the employee experience from hiring and training to scheduling and career development. Meanwhile, our research shows that two-thirds of frontline managers are making it up, figuring out how to do the job as they go, at least some of the time. And 46% of frontline managers feel burned out on a daily basis. This is all despite the fact that companies spend about 25% of their training budgets about $89 billion on leadership development every year. So my question for the panel is, how can organizations better support frontline managers so they're not forced to figure out how to do their jobs on the fly? 
Matthew Daniel (05:57):
Obviously, we're a bunch of L&D folks on the line, so one of the first things you always want to jump to is developing managers, but I think we should be a little more specific about what we mean by developing managers. I think what we're not talking about is shoving a bunch of folks through another hour of e-learning. I think we're talking about role play given the chance for people to practice hard conversations. And then I also think are there things we shouldn't put pressure on managers to do. All of us on this podcast now are fans of the folks at RedThread. And the fundamental question I ask some days based on some of the research they've done is, are we not putting too much pressure on managers? And maybe some of what we actually need to do is reallocate some of the things that we expect them to execute out in the field and give that to people who it's their specialization.
Lori Niles-Hofmann (06:52):
Could not agree more. And a wonderful shoutout to RedThread, big fan as well. We talk about in the report about clarifying and simplifying the role of the manager. And I think that's a huge one. A lot of workforces, I would say probably the vast majority, are structured so that the only way to increase your salary. Let's face it, that is a motivator whether we want to acknowledge that or not. Of course, CEOs would like to say, well, they just love to come to work. The reality is salary is a priority, but the only way to do that is to become a people manager. The fact is that not everybody has that, but it doesn't mean that they don't have skills that are actually deeply niche and are of maybe equivalent value. So I think simplifying that role, and I've seen this actually at a few organizations where they do actually have external coaches who do the people development, for example, part of things which I actually think is genius. And that's not saying you don't upscale managers to do that if they have that desire and aptitude, but it's also about maybe saying these are experts who know the direction of the company and whose steep specialization is that. And I think that takes a lot of pressure off of them. It also eliminates a lot of bias. So that simplification of the role I think is a great thing. So great shoutout Matthew on that.
Al Dea (08:08):
Yeah, and the one thing I would add is I think what Matthew said in there too is that in some cases you may actually have to take some things off of someone's plate. And I'll be honest, we're really good at addition, but I don't know if collectively we've been great at subtraction. And I think that's a reality. Unfortunately, the people who often feel this the most are those people who are on the frontline. What it ultimately speaks to is that we actually have to have a better context of what it is that they do. It's very easy sometimes to lose sight of that. I know that sounds really simple, but if you want to take something off someone's plate, you actually need to know what they do in the first place. And so I think a very good place to start is just actually understanding what their context is.
Matthew Daniel (08:52):
Al, I just want to double-click on one thing you said, which is in this research report which is consistent at Guild. JD, like you all over at Axonify, we're spending a lot of time focused on frontline employees. The disconnect that's reflected in your report is so consistent with what we see all the time between what executives perceive, what the frontline employees are looking for and the managers who are caught in the middle. They're being squeezed on both sides about how to do that. And so I think, Al, your point about knowing what's happening in the field is so critical. Lori, the thing you said that I think is really interesting is you are going to have people who are great at coaching. And so for an organization that's working at scale, how do you create more dynamic services from the people function
(09:39):
Where you can allow people who want to do coaching want to do deeper feedback and want to provide those kinds of services, just do that? And folks who are really good at operational pieces you need, and JD, you all pointed to this in the report, you kind of need more dynamic capabilities inside the organization. You need to let people play to their strengths instead of always focusing on their weaknesses. And so I think, Lori, that's where we struggle is the scale of how do we create this kind of dynamic experience where some managers might want to lean into one thing and be really good at it, and we, as a people function for those who are in that, could be dynamic around them just to kind of plug the holes.
JD Dillon (10:23):
So many great reflections and principles shared in regard to what it can take to effectively enable managers. I think a lot of organizations set up the role as if the world operates in a perfect bubble, right? If we are assigning people the right amount of work and relying on them for the right amount of effort and tasks and balancing act between corporate responsibility and frontline teams because we know exactly how every day runs, but then the delivery truck is late and there's a guest losing their mind and the opening cashier called in sick and a surprise auditor showed up. That's just the reality of what it is to manage a frontline operation. Like you said, I don't think you can ever make the job easy, but I think making the job simple is something that we have to take a hard look at because the truth is you just can't train burnout out of a systemically challenging situation.
(11:13):
So with that said, I want to turn the question over to our live LinkedIn audience. How can organizations help frontline managers fit learning and development into an already busy schedule like we talked about? So I want you to share your ideas in the chat and we might be sending you a $50 Walmart gift card after today's show. So while conducting research for this year's Deskless Report available now at Axonify.com/Deskless, we asked frontline workers about the biggest challenges they face in their day-to-day work. And they ranked staffing having enough capable people to do the job and get it done right as their third biggest challenge. Second was the ability to meet their goals and complete their tasks. But their biggest challenge and the biggest challenge for their managers is dealing with customers. Customer incivility including everything from people asking to speak with a manager more often to incidents of violence in the workplace have been on the rise since the pandemic and now 40% of retail associates are scared to go to work and 73% of hospitality workers are battling chronic stress. Bad customers aren't a new problem, but it's now the problem frontline workers are struggling to handle. So my question for y'all is what can organizations do to help frontline workers deal with increasing instances of customer incivility?
Al Dea (12:31):
This is a really hard one.
(12:34):
I am going to try to answer this not for my L&D hat, but maybe my, I'm a human hat and we'll see where it kind of goes from there. JD, I believe you had Steve Hunt on the show and Steve has a line, something to the extent of ‘Companies need healthy employees to have a healthy business and employees need to be able to serve their customers in order for the business to be healthy.’ I think it's really hard to have a healthy business and healthy employees if you're dealing with uncivil customers. I think that the move to kind of put the customer and the customer always being right, I think it was well-intentioned, but I think because of where we are today in terms of society as well as just through the use of technology, we're starting to see maybe that maxim has limitations.
(13:22):
And so I actually do think is beholden on a business to put some lines in the sand in order for us to run a healthy business. This is what we need to do. Part of that is to support your employees. If your employees can't do their jobs, you can't have a healthy and successful business. So, I would actually say that it really does start with an organization taking an honest look to say, what do we deem as the things that we will tolerate and support and what might we not? And that might be controversial to say because that may mean in some cases you may not be taking on customers. But I would also argue if you really thought about it, you would probably ask yourself, what is the cost? Because as your report outlines, we're seeing what the cost is and none of those costs, I think for any true business leader, are costs they really want to bear or should bear. So that's my human take on it.
Lori Niles-Hofmann (14:17):
I would completely concur. And I think, excellent answer there, Al. I don't know if it is an L&D problem in the classical sense that it comes down to a policy in that we allow managers to say thank you very much, but we will actually pass on serving you as a customer because of your conduct. And that's a really difficult one, but I think empowering them to make the call, what I don't want to see is organizations say, wow, we have 30%. I think the astronomical number you said was reaching burnout and saying, well, we're going to give them a subscription to a meditation app that is not going to be the solution or we're going to give you more education and training on how to handle difficult customers. There is something about being able to navigate and diffuse a difficult conversation, but I think there is also a reality to say this is actually unacceptable from a human perspective.
(15:14):
I will never forget being a bank teller. And I had a client who said something really offensive to me and my branch manager overheard it. And it's funny because I would've just taken it, my branch manager overheard it and said, thank you very much, we'll be closing your accounts. And there was no other further discussion about it. And now when I look back on it in hindsight, it really wasn't. I was very young and it was an incredibly inappropriate thing to say. So I think instances of that are maybe just what we all collectively need to do.
Matthew Daniel (15:44):
Yeah, JD, I want to add one note. So I think fantastic points, and I do think we can be trained in de-escalation, that is helpful, but ultimately you actually point to it in the report as the number one and props to you all on making the report super actionable in a number of areas. But number one in this area was actually to increase staffing. And I think I'm on a mission to civilize. I've decided I'm on sabbatical, I'm a week and a half in, and I've just decided that I want to say things that we're all ignoring. But we need to, and I actually think you all did this, which is we're short staffed. Everyone is trying to drive profitability wherever they can. And almost all of the companies out there that have heavy frontline employees are also organizations that are often running on low margins, right?
(16:39):
Retail organizations, low margins, hospitality low margins, foodservice low margins. These are low-margin businesses where that margin cannot come is failing to staff appropriately out in the field. Now you called it out sometimes folks call in and it's time and I'm short-staffed. I think we don't, that's not the major. I think the major cause is that organizations have increasingly worked to squeeze as much margin out as possible because the market is demanding it. The market wants efficiency right now in a way that hasn't. And I think somebody has to stand up, especially for those who are in learning, but also in people functions. I know there are a number of folks who do this who are not, right? They're out in the business serving folks, learning there. But I think we've got to have real conversations about the fact that we are increasing the unhealth, the lack of health of our employees by failing to staff appropriately while the workload continues to increase.
(17:43):
And so we just have this whole population that's on razor's edge all the time, frustrated from the experience in the store, and that's what they're frustrated with, right? They're frustrated out in the field with that customer experience with what they're having everywhere. And the fact that they often will struggle then to get service from folks because they're understaffed in that location, goodness, it just compounds. So we've got to really tackle making sure that we're staffed appropriately to give good customer experiences and then we'll also decrease the rate at which we have really angry customers out in the field. We won't eliminate it, but we can help.
JD Dillon (18:21):
Yeah, that's a great point around, it's a complicated problem and you can't necessarily make all bad things go away, but you can mitigate the things that you can mitigate by
(18:30):
Taking a pretty common-sense approach to things. One of the other things that we recommend because so many of the lines directly connect to one another in this report is that it also comes back to managers. Having spent half my career as a frontline manager, I can attest to the fact that people behave differently when the person with authority standing right there than when the person with authority is not there. And I get called into the situation after something has taken place. So if we're overburdening our entire teams, especially the manager, we're making it that much harder to respond to customers when they need things and then we're building more problematic situations as opposed to facing off against the ones and being properly supporting the ones that are going to take place for other unfortunate reasons. So all great comments. Once again. Let's go back into the LinkedIn Live chat.
(19:19):
I want to hear your thoughts on how you would respond to a customer who's behaving badly. Maybe you're in the customer service world, maybe you're enabling folks who are. If someone's maybe yelling at you for something you didn't do, what's your go-to approach for calming down an upset customer? Share your tips in the LinkedIn chat for a chance to grab a $50 Kroger gift card after the show heading into our next theme, it's communication because of course communication is a problem when it comes to the workplace in general, but especially on the frontline. That's why it's been a theme in every iteration of The Deskless Report to this point, corporate and frontline workers are on two totally different pages when it comes to the effectiveness of workplace communication practices. This year we found that 62% of executives, so not a super high number, to start believe their organizational communication is very helpful.
(20:05):
39% of frontline employees agree. But then we dug a little deeper to figure out, okay, what exactly are the gaps that exist in workplace communication? And feedback jumped out as a major challenge because all communication isn't about just pushing information down the hierarchy. It's also about providing that one-on-one touchpoint, that guidance and listening to people's feedback, 96% of executives assume frontline workers are receiving feedback at least sometimes on the job. Only 67% of frontline workers say they regularly get feedback and only 44% less than half of frontline workers feel heard by the organization. So my question for y'all is how can organizations improve their feedback practices so frontline employees have more consistent touchpoints regarding their performance and opportunities to provide that two-way feedback about the workplace in the organization?
Lori Niles-Hofmann (21:00):
This is a meaty one. This is a tough one. I have many, many thoughts on this, but I'm going to just open with one because I would love to hear what the others also have to say about this. One of the things I noticed consistently of feedback, which is probably my biggest complaint about it, is that it's not given as feedback. It's put in language that is either so soft or diffused because people are taught that that's the way they give feedback or to give feedback in the sandwich method, say something nice, then give them the meat and then say something nice and as a result, it's not really feedback. So I'm actually not that surprised when people say, I'm not getting feedback because I'm wondering if there's something that's not even constructive being given or if it is constructive, it's being given out of context or it's not coming from the right person.
(21:48):
How many organizations really sit down and say, what is our feedback strategy? Very, very few other than the people managers do it. That's what they do. They're people managers, they give feedback. But that's simply unrealistic, especially when we've already talked about all the other things that a people manager has to do and is it happening in situ? Is it happening in a meaningful way? Is it happening right after a very difficult interaction with a customer when that person is not in a position to even take in constructive feedback because their adrenaline is just so high? So I think putting together constructive feedback and scaffolding is really what's needed. And by constructive feedback, I guess that's a double pun. It's constructive, but it's also constructing that so that there is actually a plan for it rather than people managers will do it because we sent them on a feedback-giving course.
Matthew Daniel (22:43):
I do think there's an interesting parallel here, which is that even if we talk about white-collar behind the desk, there's a feedback problem there, right? Most companies find consistently that managers aren't great at feedback. The irony behind that is that many of those places require or suggest that on a weekly or biweekly basis, you have 30 minutes where you're talking about the status of things. How's it going? What are you learning? How are you doing? Well, meanwhile, frontline deathless employees often don't have the rhythm of business at all. That requires that there is a check-in. So I think one of the things in the report that definitely is good is a level of structure that says on some level of frequency, we should encourage and require that managers have conversations. But then again, I think to Lori's point, it's not just all managers.
(23:41):
I also think there is this sense of, and we saw it happen, especially in post pandemic, like pulse surveys went out all the time. There was a lot of asking for feedback and then crickets from the top-down about what's happening. And I finished up a report recently for a defense business board that was all about communication. We did two of them back to back, which were about the cyclical nature of communication and then top-down communication. And often at the top levels of the organization, there is this belief that the communication is getting there because they have said they have directed that their teams communicate, but then it gets filtered, right? People feel like their job further down the line is to filter for relevancy for the people out in the field, oh, this doesn't matter that their job, we shouldn't talk about it.
(24:30):
They don't need it. But in fact, they are looking to be connected to home-base folks out in the field. Folks, imagine that frontline workers desk, desk-less workers just don't want to have any connection to that. And what they want is just to be good at the job and move on. But no, they want to know what is happening in my career, what's happening with this company I work with? What are the differences that we're creating? What is the difference I'm creating in the lives of my customers every day when I show up here? It is the energy and juice by which a hospitality worker shows up to do their job if they want to create great guest experiences. So ultimately I think there is this lack of connectivity that comes from just not just top-down communication, communication about what we're going to do, but top-down communication that says, this is what we did based on your feedback, here's the story of the impact that it's having on the lives of others. Here's how we're going to continue to monitor and make this better. Here's what we found out we did, we tested and it didn't work. All of those pieces actually are required in order to believe that feedback matters whenever you're giving it up as well.
Lori Niles-Hofmann (25:40):
I would agree with that. And I would also add to it too, putting it in a context that makes it relevant to the frontline worker. So there's a difference between I can now if I'm in hospitality, I can now put out two pieces of soap versus one, why was that decision made? And what do I do when a hotel guest complains to me that I don't have an extra bar of soap? What does that mean? Why was it made? That translation I find often doesn't happen. They're talking about shareholder value and bigger things, which I get are important up there. They're not important when you are or in that context are not important when the relevancy has not been established.
Matthew Daniel (26:17):
Yeah, obfuscating corporate language. Sorry, Al, go ahead.
JD Dillon (26:20):
Yeah, I was just going to add and do it in a way that again, acknowledges the reality people are going to face because they're going to adjust the messaging as they need to anyway. And in some cases, I've heard frontline employees just outright say, it's not my decision. Corporate decided to do it right. We'll throw you under the bus if you don't include them in the conversation to the point where I spent a lot of time on Reddit reading frontline-related conversations and screenshots of your corporate training show up on Reddit. It just does. So we as customers see the communication you're trying to put forth, and it doesn't make sense to us either because it doesn't just match the reality of the types of questions and interactions we're going to have. And I think everyone knows frontline employees don't make decisions about how businesses run in that way, but they're the people you can talk to and that connects the dots to the incivility conversation we had earlier. If you don't properly listen to your employees and communicate effectively. Sorry, Al, go ahead.
Al Dea (27:16):
Yeah, so two quick things. So top down and then bottom up. So top down, something interesting about feedback is that I think if we maybe reframe it, it actually becomes something that we can all glom onto a little bit more feedback is learning and who better or who can learn than people who are on the front lines in terms of their interactions with their customers. And so what I would offer from a top-down perspective is that being open to feedback and actually seeking feedback is an invitation for you to actually learn what your customers need and want. And it's a bridge for you to have that better relationship with folks on the frontline because you're going to them asking for them what they're seeing and observing and hearing, and that's just going to make their experience better and it's going to make you, if you're incorporated, it's going to make your experience better.
(27:57):
So that's the first thing. And then the second thing from a bottoms-up perspective, I actually was at a conference this past summer where there were a bunch of different panels and discussions, particularly with organizations that hired and employed lots of hourly and frontline workers. And I remember hearing from this organization, it was a hospitality organization and they had a lot of workers who you can pick up shifts and schedule shifts on an ad hoc basis. And so a lot of seasonal workers. And so one of the things that they actually did was they started implementing almost like if you've ever been in those airport restrooms where they have the smiley customer experience things of how was your day? So they actually started implementing those at the end of every shift. And so if you had in the middle or like a frowny face, you could actually give a comment afterward as to basically what you wanted to provide in terms of potential feedback.
(28:49):
It was really interesting because they saw it as an important employee voice and making sure that these seasonal workers did have a voice in terms of being able to articulate how they felt and what they experienced. But I think the really interesting thing is that what they did from, from a culture perspective, if you were a shift manager and you got so many of these, you had to come up with a plan for how you were going to act on them. And so that was something that they reinforced throughout all of the manager training and all the communications of like, Hey, this is going to be really valuable to you, but for every so many of these, you have this long of a time where you actually have to put together a plan for how you're going to action on it. So getting, I think to the point I think Matthew made, if feedback goes into the void, no one wants anything to do with that. But if people know that you're going to listen to it and maybe don't agree with everything, or maybe you can't do anything with something, but if you can show them that you're going to do something with it, then they're open to sharing a little bit more of their ideas.
JD Dillon (29:44):
And that echoes the importance of how much this conversation around communication and especially feedback is tied to trust and relationships. My favorite as a frontline manager feedback story is I had a group of employees who were not doing what I had assigned them to do at that particular moment. They were goofing around and we had a rapport and a relationship to the point where all I had to do was go over to them and I just said the words, I'm not happy right now. And I walked away and they fixed the behavior because they understood I didn't have to yell at anybody. I didn't have to go into detail about what they were doing wrong. They knew what they were doing wrong. I just had to kind of nudge them back in the right direction and leverage the relationship we had built over time.
(30:29):
Instead of making it about that particular moment, it was about the broader relationship. So let's head over to LinkedIn chat again. What's the best way to open a feedback conversation? How do you set the tone for a conversation where you're maybe sharing challenging information? You want to make sure the person isn't taking it as they did something wrong, or maybe necessarily becoming defensive instead of making it more about a learning opportunity. So share your feedback tips in the chat for a chance to grab a $50 Walmart gift card after the show. As we head into our fourth big insight for this year's Deskless Report, it's a critical one that's often overlooked when we talk about frontline work and its community. I was a frontline cast member for three years of my 10 years at Disney, and of course, I learned a lot about how to operate attractions, handle guest service situations and manage a safety-critical workplace.
(31:17):
But what I remember most is the sense of community, the bond that people had because we worked in those roles at that place at that time. And it's something that we share to this day, sometimes 20 years later. But a community doesn't just happen, especially in a frontline workplace that's far removed from the corporate culture and the value decision-makers at home office. Building a frontline community means making sure that people feel like they're never alone. It means building trust, fostering relationships and breeding a comradery that motivates people to work hard for one another, not just for the company. So my question for the group is how can organizations foster a sense of community and inclusion within their frontline teams?
Matthew Daniel (32:01):
I would just start by saying, that if you don't build community the way you want it, it'll be built about you. Community gets built, it just becomes an us versus them in fieldwork. If you're not intentionally creating a, we are all in this together. I do think this idea of delegating community leadership out into the field is so important. Giving people, people are looking for stretch opportunities for places to grow. They're looking to build community. Not everybody, right? Let's not pretend everybody who's there is looking to lean in this way, but there are some folks who really want to do this, but here's what's really important. They can't be on top of their day job without compensation and recognition. So it would be really easy to put the burden on folks in the frontline and say, you out there, I'm going to outsource the building of community and value to you all, but you still keep the same hourly pay and it's just an expectation that you do this kind of work on breaks or a certain carve out once a month that we give you. There have to be ways to both recognize it monetarily, to recognize it in front of peers and get that intrinsic motivation happening. So I do love this idea of giving it back out to the field, but I think you've got to create incentives for people in the field to provide leadership and not just make it a forced top-down activity.
Lori Niles-Hofmann (33:29):
You took the words out of my mouth right about that. I was going to say, oh wait, don't make me do the break snail. Don't make me buy the birthday card. But yeah, understanding what the cost is, both from a time perspective and also being inclusive, ensuring that those culture building things do not happen outside of work exclusively. Not everybody has that, especially as a frontline worker if you've got family obligations. And that's also true in white collar. I mean, I don't want to say it's exclusive, but these are time-bound roles. So I think that acknowledging that is really important. I think also too, making sure that the culture reflects what's there locally, that the people on the ground are going to know what the cultural norms are, who's having a grandchild, whose pet maybe passed away or any of those sorts of things.
(34:19):
And what is the norm and what is important locally is really, really important. I remember working for a bank, and we used to try to push out these cultural things for some of our branches that were located in the north in none of it. And they were looking at us like we had three heads. We really had no business doing that. They're like, we'll take care of this on our own. And there was a real resistance like, oh, but what if you do it wrong? They're not going to get it wrong, but they know best what is happening locally. Sorry, Al.
Al Dea (34:47):
No, I was just going to say something that's in alignment with what you're sharing. Obviously, I don't have full quantitative data to prove this, but I'm likely to believe that your best managers are already doing this in your organization.
(35:02):
They are already doing this in your organization. Maybe not all of them, maybe not every one of them, but the best ones absolutely are. And I think that's a great invitation to go learn again, remember what we were saying before because feedback is learning to learn what they're doing and to ask them, Hey, what are you noticing? Or How are you building relationships? When you do this, what's the feedback you're getting from your peers? And what I love about that is that most of the time that is organic, which it's hard to fake, right? If it's working and it's done by those people, they've done it on their own fruition. And I think that's a great place to start. What are some things that maybe we could encourage more of getting back to the culture piece? So I think it's probably already happening.
(35:44):
There are probably some things you can do to encourage more of it, to scale it or to provide a little bit more scaffolding to maybe encourage other people to do it. But again, while not everyone necessarily needs to feel like I love my job, I love my teammates. Most of us do want to have a pleasant experience working with our other colleagues. And I think all of us, to a certain degree, misery loves company too. And so if you can just study and observe and be open to learning to see what people are already doing, I think that's a really good place to start with possibilities of what else you can encourage some of your other managers or other individual employee leaders to go and take on to.
JD Dillon (36:22):
Yeah, our research shows there are two things that retain frontline workers more than anything else, including pay. People are more likely to stay when they trust their manager and when they like the people they work with. That's why I always say frontline employees don't work for your company, they work for their manager, and they're not working for the success of your business. They're working for the success of one another. So when you can create that community environment where people are willing to pick up the extra shift to help out a peer or to stay later to help someone else accomplish their mission or their task for the day, that's an infinitely stronger motivation than anything that's coming out of the corporate environment.
(36:58):
So let's hear what you have to say in the LinkedIn chat recognition, a big part of building a strong workplace community. How do you prefer to be recognized? It's kind of a personal question. How do you want your manager of the company to express gratitude for your artwork? Share your recognition preference because it's important to understand how people individually want to participate in the community and be recognized. Share it in the LinkedIn chat for a chance to grab a $50 Kroger gift card. As we head into our final topic for today, wrapping up the conversation, because of course, we've got to talk about technology. Have we mentioned AI yet? Isn't that illegal? Digital transformation has clearly accelerated on the frontline since we published our last report in 2022. This is partially due to hiring challenges and operational adjustments from the pandemic. And then there's the whole AI conversation and a push to find ways to gain value, improve productivity, automate repetitive task and potentially even automate dangerous tasks out of the workflow.
(37:55):
But still, most frontline workers believe technology is going to make their jobs easier and not necessarily replace them because only 5% of managers or percent of employees see AI threatening their jobs. And of course, it depends on the industry and the workload, but I do think we've seen some of the limitations already when it comes to the role. Technology can play on the frontline when you look at the progress around systems like self-checkout or just walk out technology in retail over the past couple of years. So providing the right technology to support processes like training, scheduling and knowledge management can boost productivity and improve the workplace experience. But making the wrong tech decisions can add complexity and frustration to an already hard job. So my last question for y'all is how can we make sure corporate technology investments live up to the hype when it comes to the value provided to the business and to employees?
Matthew Daniel (38:49):
User test, user test, user test, user test, user test. 

Lori Niles-Hofmann (38:56):
Absolutely. And I would also add communicate, communicate, communicate. A lot of this tech relies on collecting data about people's performance and what people are doing, and there's a lot of tracking that some people are going to view as nefarious and as a big brother monitoring, but if you explain to people, we're actually looking at how you do X because we want to be able to help you improve that, as opposed to this is going to be part of your performance review and we're going to look at how many times you do you make a mistake, there's a very, very big, there's a big difference. Often when people know that they're being monitored, I mean the game becomes, how do I trick the system, but agree with the wholeheartedly on the user test? Can it be broken? Does it work? My personal favorite, make the CEO use it for a day.
Matthew Daniel (39:51):
Yeah, I'll just tell a quick story about a user test. This is about a learning system, and PS learning systems go out in the field, too.
(39:59):
We were using a SaaS platform. This is back when I was at Capital One, and I kept trying to tell the product managers just how unusable the platform was for most users, how this learning management system was not helpful and I was not getting through. And ultimately what I did was we had a user research lab in the DC area at Capital One, which is also where the product managers were. And I said, why don't we just come? I'll let you use my employees as Guinea pigs. We'll sit behind the one-way mirror. We'll watch them interact. You've got this new feature, you're so hyped on that you're about to roll out in the product. Come watch my users interact with it and we'll see how it goes, right? Let the user research tell us what's good and what's not. They were just astounded as they watched us, they conducted the research, right?
(40:54):
They were the ones in the room doing the interviews, but they watched people not be able to search for things that they needed. They watched the words not resonate with people on the platforms that they were using. And so all of a sudden they walked out and they said, Hey, can we come do this regularly with every new feature? And my answer was, yes, you can come test on my folks as much as possible. So that's just one system that frontline employees are using. But ultimately that thing of not just asking them in advance what you think they want, this qualitative insight, but actually going on the flip side and watching them use it, marrying that with data about where they're clicking, where things are breaking down. We do that in so many areas. We should give our own employees that same kind of service because ultimately it happens at scale for us, and it has an impact on the bottom line.
JD Dillon (41:49):
And if there's a reason that something has to be a particular way and it doesn't match the reality of frontline workers, not the preference of what people would have, explain that. Why does the system function in this way? Because you can't solve every problem. You can't provide every feature, everything can't work exactly how everyone wishes it did. But my favorite user test example is I once worked with an organization that was in the midst of a billion dollar digital transformation project that involved tablets being used with customers and scanning of devices and things like that. They did have user testing where they invited frontline employees into conference rooms to take a look at the devices that they were going to use and things like that. And then they went through some playtesting.
(42:29):
No one stood up when they were play-testing the devices. They sat down at tables the whole time. And then finally one person stood up and walked around with the device and started to realize it didn't make sense in terms of how I had to move the device. And in the real world, because they did all the testing in the lab. They didn't do it in real life. And thankfully they brought in people who are experts at real life and realized, oh, that would not have been great as part of this particular project. So simple things like your frontline employees will remember that they stand up throughout the course of the day using your technology, or they have to access it in this particular environment, or they use it on this particular network. Again, they're experts in real life. It's a great place to wrap up our conversation for today.
(43:15):
So thank you again so much. Let's hear it in the chat for our awesome panel of ITK guests, Matthew Daniel, Lori Niles-Hofmann and Al Dea, thanks again for being on the show. Thank you to everyone out there who joined our conversation and shared your insights. Remember to grab a copy of the 2024 Deskless Report featuring our five key frontline insights, along with practical tips for improving the everyday work experience within your organization. You can download it right now at Axonify.com/Deskless. And if you joined us live on LinkedIn and responded to our chat questions, be sure to keep an eye on your DMS because you may be walking away with one of our $50 gift cards after the show. And remember, you get a gift card. I need to give a big thank you to the frontline workers that you work with.
(43:56):
Even if you redeem it online, you can share your gratitude to the delivery driver dropping off those holiday goods. So thank you in advance for showing appreciation for the frontline workforce because it's something that we can all do every day. And if you had a good time, be sure to subscribe to ITK. Head over to Axonify.com/itk. Sign up for show announcements and reminders, and you can check out all 52 episodes of the show on the Axonify YouTube channel, or listen to In The Know on your favorite podcast app. Until next time, I've been JD, now you're in the know. And always remember to ask yourself the important questions: Do you know what they say about a clean desk? It's a sure sign of a cluttered desk drawer. I'll see you next time. 
In The Know is produced by Richia McCutcheon and visually designed by Mark Anderson. Additional production support by Andrea Miller, Tuong La and Maliyah Bernard. The show is written and hosted by JD Dillon. ITK is an Axonify production. For more information on how Axonify helps frontline workers learn, connect and get things done, visit Axonify.com.