How to Develop a Workforce Engagement Strategy from Scratch
If you’re wondering how to build a frontline workforce engagement strategy, this comprehensive guide will take you through the steps and prime you for success.
If you think implementing a frontline workforce engagement app is not super important and just “a nice to have,” it’s time to think again. Today, you can’t really succeed and be your profitable best without a productive, loyal workforce. And, you’ll agree ensuring top-notch performance is even more crucial for the frontline employees (as they’re the first touchpoint with your customers). It’s to turn their output in your favor that you need a solid workforce engagement strategy.
This isn’t just our view, but a fact well proven by research: Companies with highly engaged workforces are 21% more profitable and 17% more productive than those with disengaged workers. Yet despite this, 77% of the workforce remains disengaged.
Here’s one critical reason why: workforce engagement doesn’t occur by itself. You need to invest in solid efforts and act with a well-thought-out strategy to ensure engagement.
A solid plan for this is even more critical regarding frontline worker engagement (After all, they’re often out and about, have limited access to in-person times with the head office, and are commonly unable to check emails.)
Where do you start out with this, though?
If you’re wondering how to develop a workforce engagement strategy that works for frontline workers, this blog provides a step-by-step guide. Take our word; once you follow it, you will nurture a highly engaged frontline team that’s not just working but thriving.
Follow these 5 steps to build a workforce engagement strategy for frontline workers
Step 1: Assess your engagement baseline
First things first, any workforce engagement strategy-building exercise needs to start with knowing where you stand today in that respect. The same goes for the frontline workers.
The most straightforward way to figure this out is by collecting information about how your frontline workers feel with an employee engagement survey. This is the most popular approach that 55% of companies go ahead with.
Now, we don’t mean just any survey. For example, the dull, lengthy form that takes hours to fill (and everyone dreads)or a roundup of random questions that don’t really get to how frontline workers actually feel about their roles, teams, and your company (the blah corporate speak). You need to ensure your employee engagement survey is thoughtfully curated, easy to fill out, and anonymous ( honesty is essential) so you can get to the root.
Once you gather your results, spend time properly analyzing that information. Look out for patterns and pain points. For instance, you may figure that communication is lacking. (That’s what 86% of employees believe to be the underlying reason for workplace failures and lack of productivity).
Perhaps it may also be that your frontline employees don’t feel recognized for their hard work.
Whatever it is, zero down on the areas where there’s room for improvement. This data will be your holy grail to act on as you move forward.
Step 2. Set clear engagement goals
Once you know what needs fixing to charge up your frontline workforce engagement, it’s time to set some concrete goals. Ensure this is concrete and not dotted with general stuff like “make frontline employees happier.”
Yes, we’re talking SMART goals—Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound.
Let’s suppose you want to increase their satisfaction by 20% over the next year or reduce turnover by 10%. Whatever targets you set, ensure they’re realistic and aligned with your broader business objectives.
After all, your efforts for workforce engagement aren’t just for making your people feel good; they are also driving success for your company.
Step 3. Develop actionable engagement strategies
With your goals in place, the next step is mapping out how you will achieve them. The quickest way is to start by improving communication—after all, it’s the backbone of engagement, isn’t it? Ensure you are transparent, consistent, and open when communicating with frontline workers. Whether through regular updates on your employee communication apps, newsletters, or one-on-one check-ins that managers conduct, do what it takes to ensure everyone is on the same page.
Encouraging employee ownership is another approach as it’s another key engagement driver.
According to a HBR survey, 42% of respondents view engagement as a shared responsibility between managers, HR, and employees. In the same survey, one-third acknowledge the need for greater individual agency in professional growth. So provide them with learning development opportunities.
Another highly effective approach is making people feel valued. You can implement a recognition program that celebrates big and small wins. This could be as simple as a shoutout in your employee app or a formal employee of the month award. The idea is to ensure your frontline team knows their hard work isn’t going unnoticed even if you don’t meet them regularly. Did you know? Speakap integrates with Awardco to create a more rewarding and connected work experience for frontline employees.
Step 4. Implement supportive technology to enhance engagement
Whatever strategies you plan, you need a supporting toolkit. That’s where the right enabling technology plays a critical role. Let us explain how: Suppose you plan to enhance frontline communication to ensure everyone’s always on the same page. If they’re working out of different locations and are constantly on the move, you’ll need secure, mobile-friendly technology to share any information. Without it, your comms will restrict these workers with inadequate information access- and disengagement will follow.
Similarly, if your team is not meeting often in person, you’ll need a group chat where you regularly informally appreciate good work. Or, maybe you want to find out how your employees feel about the recent training you’ve conducted. How would you know if you’re not able to talk to them in person about it? This can be solved by conducting quick polls on your employee app!
In fact, dedicated employee engagement platforms like Speakap are built with these varied features to ensure excellent communication, employee recognition, and engagement.
Step 5. Combine everything & make It happen
Finally, once you’ve got everything you need—the last step is combining it all to make it work for you and boost your frontline workforce engagement. While you do this, remember that this is never a once-and-done deal.
Employee engagement is an ongoing process, which means you need to keep listening to your employees and iterating your strategies based on how they feel. And most importantly, ensure this evolves as your company grows.
Are you ready to kickstart? An engaged, high-performing frontline workforce is just around the corner
While building a workforce engagement strategy from scratch might seem daunting(especially for frontline workers), you can see how it’s not hard at all if you approach it systematically. Start with assessing the status quo, setting clear goals, mapping out strategies, and choosing enabling technology. With that, all you need is to assemble and implement it. Remember to revisit your frontline workforce engagement strategy to ensure it’s relevant to changing times.
Want to get started? An engaged, high-performing workforce awaits you with Speakap’s stellar employee engagement platform. It’s tailor-made for engaging frontline workers. Would you like a personalized demo to ascertain how it fits your unique needs? Book a free demo here