9 Effective Strategies to Bridge the Frontline Connection Gap and Create a Successful Organization

In today’s competitive business environment, it’s essential to have a strong connection between your organization and its frontline workers. The "frontline connection gap" refers to the disconnect between front-line employees and upper management in an organization. This gap can occur due to a lack of communication, resources, or understanding between the two groups, leading to a disconnect in priorities and goals.

Bridging this gap is often seen as crucial for improving organizational performance, boosting employee morale, customer satisfaction, and ultimately, the success of the business and worker satisfaction too. Here are some effective strategies you can use to bridge this gap and ensure a more cohesive and productive working relationship between the two. From developing a communication plan to providing regular feedback, these strategies will help you address the frontline connection gap in your organization and ensure that your frontline employees are engaged and productive.

Understand the Frontline Connection Gap

Before you begin any strategy to bridge the connection gap between your organization and your frontline workers, you should first understand the extent of the gap and the factors that contribute to it. To do this, it’s important to assess your current state, evaluate where you are relative to your competitors, and identify where you want to be.

Determine the root cause of the disconnect between the front-line staff and upper management. This can be done through employee surveys, focus groups, or other methods. This will help you determine where to begin your strategy. Next, you need to assess your connection with your team, including their current engagement levels, common engagement habits, and level of satisfaction. By understanding these factors, you can better align communication strategies with improving your connection with your staff. One of the ways you can do this is through Workmates employee surveys and analytics. It makes it easier for you to find out everything you need to know to make a plan.

Develop a Communication Plan

When it comes to connecting with frontline workers, no strategy is more important than communication. It’s the only way they will feel valued and understand the intentions of their managers, leaders, and executives. When communicating with your workers, you need to be transparent, develop mutual trust, and listen to the things they want and need from their jobs.

Establish clear and specific goals for improving communication and reducing the gap. This should be done in collaboration with both front-line laborers and upper management.
Determine the best channels for communication, such as email, regular meetings, or video conferencing, taking into account the needs and preferences of both front-line employees and upper management.
Encourage front-line employees to provide feedback and suggestions for improving communication and reducing the gap. This can be done through suggestion boxes, employee surveys, or other methods.
Encourage a culture of open and transparent communication throughout the organization, where both front-line employees and upper management feel comfortable sharing their thoughts, ideas, and concerns.

These strategies can help you develop a communication plan that not only addresses the connection gap but also increases employee engagement and worker satisfaction. Workmates can offer you authentic, conversational, and simple internal comms to improve employee communication. That includes 2 ways comms, a company hub, chat, and an employee directory.

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Make Your Frontline Employees Feel Valued

Although it’s important to develop a communication plan, it’s even more important to value the contributions of your team and recognize employees. The more they feel valued, they’re more likely to be engaged in their work, and overall, feel more satisfied in their jobs, boosting employee experience. There are three ways to feel valued as a frontline employee.

First, you should make sure your workers are aware of the company’s vision, strategy, and goals. This will increase their level of engagement because they’ll be more likely to feel like they’re contributing to the company’s success. Next, you need to ensure that they feel like their ideas are valued. By doing this, they realize that they have a voice in the company’s success. Finally, your employees should feel like they have a say in the company’s direction. This will increase their level of engagement because they will feel confident about having a say in the company's success. With high engagement, it is easier to accomplish a company culture where everyone feels recognized. A great way to do this is with peer-to-peer recognition software. Find out more details about what our recognition and rewards system can do for you.

Invest in Training and Development

Although communication is critical to bridging the connection gap between your organization and your frontline staff, it’s not enough. You also want to make sure your employees are trained on how to communicate effectively with customers and with each other.

You should invest in training and development, which is one of the most effective ways to create a more cohesive, productive connection between your employees and your organization. When you invest in staff training and development, you’re helping your employees learn new skills that will make them more effective, efficient, and satisfied in their jobs. This will also serve to enhance their communication skills and different forms of communication like written communication and verbal communication through planned learning and development programs for all the team members. Setting SMART goals is crucial for the effective training and development of employees because it provides a clear framework for defining, monitoring, and evaluating progress toward achieving specific objectives. Smart goal acronyms are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.

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Utilize Technology to Make Communication Easier

In order to bridge the connection gap between your organization and your frontline laborers, technology can be one of the most effective strategies. When using technology to bridge the connection gap, you want to make sure you’re using strategies that will be useful, and relevant, and create a sense of connection.

You can utilize technology to improve communication between employees and managers by using programs like Google Hangouts, Zoom, or an automated message service. This will make communication easier between an employee and the management and facilitate a smooth communication flow that can bring every worker on board. To keep them on track with what is happening in the company - Workmates has a newsfeed with which you can make company announcements everyone will see.

Measure and Track the Progress of Frontline Connection Gap

If you want to create a more cohesive and productive connection between your organization and your frontline workers, you need to measure and track the progress of your frontline connection gap. This can help to identify areas of opportunity, areas of potential improvement, and areas of connection that are missing.

By doing this, you can make adjustments and improvements that will help bridge the connection gap, ensuring a more connected organization. When measuring and tracking the progress of the frontline connection gap, you should capture the right data at the right time. To do this, you need to capture data at different points throughout the day, including during the day, at night, and during off hours, like over the weekend or on holidays. You can use technology to do this and gain reliable and actionable insights to implement your action plan to address the frontline connection gap and achieve employee satisfaction. It can be hard to find the time to do the surveys the right way. The Workmates platform from HR Cloud makes it incredibly simple to design and distribute staff surveys, pulse surveys, and polls in order to get real-time input and advance the business.

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Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Diversity, equity, and inclusion are important factors that can help bridge the connection gap between your organization and your frontline staff. You should create a more diverse workforce, increase social and economic equity, and ensure that all employees are included in the company’s success.

Creating an inclusive environment that is inclusive of all employees irrespective of their gender, race, ethnicity, backgrounds, experiences, and identities will help to create an inclusive organization that’s diverse and inclusive, reflecting different cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Employee recognition through a fair and unbiased approach is a good step in this direction.

One way to do it is through employee recognition software like Workmates. With it, any employee has the opportunity to digitally "kudo" a colleague on their effort or success. Kudos points are kept track of and can be exchanged for gift cards, company merchandise, or other forms of gratitude. Employee benefits from recognition and rewards also aid in the development of a culture that values excellence and teamwork.

Employee Well-Being and Mental Health

To effectively bridge the connection gap between your organization and your frontline workers, well-being and mental health is an important factors to consider. When you create an environment for employee well-being and mental health, you’ll be able to create an environment that encourages recognition, connection, engagement, and satisfaction among your employees.

Here are some steps that organizations can take to address this issue:

Create a supportive work environment: Encourage a positive and supportive work environment that values their well-being and mental health. This includes providing a safe and inclusive workplace, fostering open communication, providing employee feedback, and promoting a healthy work-life balance.
Provide resources: Offer resources, such as employee assistance programs, counseling services, and access to mental health resources, to support employee well-being and mental health.
Encourage self-care: Encourage your team to prioritize their well-being and mental health, and provide opportunities for them to practice self-care and stress management.
Foster a culture of open communication: Foster a culture of open communication, where deskless workers feel comfortable discussing their mental health and well-being, and where there is no stigma associated with seeking support.
Promote physical activity: Encourage physical activity, such as regular breaks, stretching, or physical activity programs, to support deskless well-being and mental health.
Recognize the importance of mental health: Educate both front-line employees and upper management on the importance of mental health, and promote a culture that values and supports the mental health of every worker.

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Alignment of Goals and Objectives

An effective strategy to address the between your organization and your frontline employees involves ensuring that your goals and objectives are aligned with those of every employee. Here are a few tips that can help you:

Clearly articulate the organization's overall goals and objectives, and ensure that both front-line employees and upper management understand how their role fits into these larger goals.
Communicate the goals and objectives to the front-line team and upper management, and ensure that they understand how their work contributes to achieving these goals.
Provide the necessary resources, such as training, tools, and technology, to help deskless workers and upper management achieve their goals.
Regularly review progress towards the goals and objectives, and make adjustments as needed to ensure that they are aligned and achievable.

Conclusion

In conclusion, addressing the frontline connection gap is crucial for improving organizational performance, employee morale, and customer satisfaction. Whether you’re a manager, leader, executive, or executive, it’s important to understand the connection gap between your organization and your frontline workers and make adjustments to bridge the gap and create an engaging and positive work environment for every worker.

This can be achieved through a combination of effective communication, goal alignment, and a focus on employee well-being, worker recognition, and mental health. By promoting open communication, providing resources, and feedback, encouraging recognition, and fostering a supportive work environment, organizations can bridge the gap between front-line employees and upper management and create a more harmonious, productive, and effective workplace.

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Author Bio:

This article is written by a marketing team member at HR Cloud. HR Cloud is a leading provider of proven HR solutions, including recruiting, onboarding, employee communications & engagement, and rewards & recognition. Our user-friendly software increases employee productivity, delivers time and cost savings, and minimizes compliance risk.