How To Maximise The Engagement Of Frontline Staff?

Frontline staff are the first glimpse that customers get into any business. Having these employees engaged means that customers will get a great first experience with your company. 

In short, maximising frontline staff engagement is important for increasing sales and ensuring that your business is accurately represented. We’re going to look at how to keep these staff enthusiastic and switched on, and why they are so integral to a business.

Why Is Engaging Frontline Staff Important?

Your frontline staff can hold positions such as cashiers, sales assistants, customer service reps, and receptionists. As you can tell, the reason why it’s important to keep your frontline staff engaged is all in the name - these employees really are at the front of the line! 

Certain companies may have many employees who are not desk-bound and who instead spend a lot of time interacting with customers. 

These employees form a big part of customers’ overall experience with the company. Frontline staff should be seen as brand ambassadors for the company as they have the power to heavily impact the reputation of the business. 

But, just as they can positively impact customer experience, they can also negatively affect it. As a result, disengaged and dissatisfied frontline employees can negatively impact your company brand, as well as the bottom line.

 

How To Engage Frontline Staff More Effectively?

Engaged frontline staff are clearly integral to the success of a business. They are constantly engaging with customers and, therefore, are best positioned to understand their needs and wants. When your staff are engaged, they are more likely to offer helpful advice and guidance to management on how to handle customer relations, product and service requirements and feedback. 

Here are our top tips for creating a positive workspace for your employees:

 

1. Frictionless, mobile-first communications

Since frontline employees are customer-focused, it can be hard for management to contact them when needed. Often, the easiest way to contact employees is via an employee engagement app. These tools are designed to simplify communication within the organisation. This keeps employees in the loop on all notable events and also allows frontline staff to voice any concerns and ideas they might have.

2. Good working conditions

Ensuring that employees are happy in their working environment is essential. Working conditions could be improved by ensuring employees have access to the necessary technology, have a good relationship with their manager and peers, and work realistic hours in accordance to the local labour law.

 

3. Make their opinions matter

Asking for employee feedback, and acting on it, is a great way to make employees feel valued. Make sure that you have a two-way communications channel in place through which they can voice their concerns, ideas and opinions. Then, take these ideas and suggestions into account, act on them and communicate next steps around them with the employees.

Practical guide for setting up an incident reporting process

4. Don’t micromanage 

Micromanaging can be extremely frustrating for employees as it feels as though you don’t trust them to get their jobs done. As a result, they may feel less motivated to produce quality work. Rather, trust that they are on top of their tasks and know what they’re doing so that they can thrive in their roles.

 

5. Ensure that they know their role in your business

If staff understand how their role can positively impact the business, they can become more enthusiastic about working toward a common goal. Frontline staff need to be passionate about the company’s mission and need to understand the bigger picture.

 

6. Reward them for good work

Your frontline staff deserve to celebrate their achievements! Recognising good performance on a regular basis serves as a great motivating factor and helps boost engagement. 

 

Final Thoughts

Frontline staff are key representatives of any business and have a direct impact on customer experiences. So, if you want your customers to have an enjoyable experience, you’ll need to ensure that your staff are actively engaged and satisfied with their jobs. 

If you’ve been looking for ways to give your frontline staff a boost in motivation, try some of the above tips. They can help improve the level of engagement amongst your valuable frontline workers.

 

If your organisation is looking for a tool to involve all employees in idea generation for better decision-making on workplace and business strategies, have a look at the Falcony Platform. It enables your staff to participate in creating clarity on non-conformities, give feedback, ideas and input for the business, as well as preventing and decreasing the amount of friction in cross-team communications, and gather actionable data in the process.

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We are building the world's first operational involvement platform. Our mission is to make the process of finding, sharing, fixing and learning from issues and observations as easy as thinking about them and as rewarding as being remembered for them.‍

By doing this, we are making work more meaningful for all parties involved.

More information at falcony.io.

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