2023 Is The Year To Give Female Frontliners More Flexibility

A key to retention and productivity

By Sarah Moore, Beekeeper

As we celebrate Women’s History Month and the progress women have made in the workplace, companies across industries continue to look for ways to meet the needs of their female employees. Yet a key part of the conversation that is often overlooked is the disconnect between employers and their frontline workforce. As retention and productivity are at the top of frontline leaders’ minds, they need to find ways to give their female employees greater flexibility on the job. While desk-based teams leverage strategies like remote and hybrid work to improve work-life balance, frontline workers do not share these options. If companies are looking to stay competitive and retain their frontline workforce, offering more shift flexibility is key–especially for female staff.

Frontline Workers Have Been Disenfranchised from Flexible Work

Frontline workers make up 80 percent of the global workforce. And more than two-thirds of these workers (64.4 percent) are women. Many frontline staff has variable shift schedules that make it hard to balance work, family, personal finances and other priorities. At the same time, sky-high costs of childcare and household support make these services unavailable to most female frontliners. More than one-third of frontline workers (33.9 percent) are over age 50 and have a minor child at home (35.9 percent), while almost one quarter (23 percent) live in poverty.

It's no wonder that analysts and others are sounding the alarm about the need to help frontline staff. Gartner names “hybrid flexibility for the frontlines” as one of its nine future of work trends for 2023. The analyst firm finds that 58 percent of organizations have invested in improving their frontline experience, while another third plan to do so in the next 12 months. The top three attractors for workers are gaining control over their work schedules, acquiring paid leave and increasing the stability of scheduling, states Gartner.

How Flexible Work Benefits Frontline Workers

The ability to take control over one’s schedule benefits frontline workers in multiple ways, including:

● Preventing job burnout: The race to hire and retain frontline workers is on. There are more than 10 million open jobs across all industries and all levels but only 5.7 million unemployed workers could fill them.

Yet, the disconnect between frontline workers and managers is growing. A Beekeeper study found that 40 percent of workers were stressed by chronic understaffing issues, while 36 percent were overwhelmed by frequent changes around new policies, teammates and safety procedures. In addition, two out of every three workers quit when there’s no future for them.

Employers can use frontline success systems to prevent burnout. These solutions improve the frequency and quality of collaboration, make it easier to solicit employee suggestions on how to improve processes, or to give real-time, mobile access to the things workers care most about like paystubs and shift schedules. In addition, organizations can use these tools to provide anytime, anywhere training workers can use to progress their careers. Loyal, hardworking shift workers can become supervisors and leaders, building long-lasting careers and increasing the value they provide their organizations.

● Planning and scheduling childcare needs: Common industry scheduling practices can leave female frontline workers scrambling. These practices include just-in-time scheduling, where workers are informed of schedules as little as two hours before work; shift schedules that rotate weekly; twelve-hour shifts; and overnight shifts. Many frontline female workers likely rely on a patchwork network of family and friends to provide childcare and household support due to low wages and high childcare costs. Even if they have paid care, the supply of this care is limited: more than 126,000 childcare workers have quit for higher-paying jobs.

Every working mother carries the stress of arranging and paying for childcare. But this stress is profound for female frontline workers. Female workers with stable shift schedules can plan out childcare weeks in advance and make backup plans if their normal providers are unavailable. They can communicate their schedules to families, friends and childcare providers proactively, likely increasing the pool of people who are able to help. Of course, what’s even better is when employers offer onsite childcare, removing this constant source of worry for working parents.

Frontline success systems make it easier to coordinate and communicate shift schedules, providing clarity and more flexibility. In addition, these tools enable workers to swap shifts easily while closing the loop with managers automatically.

● Reducing work stress: Having clarity and more control over work reduces stress. Nearly half (49 percent) of organizational leaders say they want to provide frontline workers with more say in when, where and how they work. These options include enabling staff to choose their own hours as long as they maintain that schedule, working extra hours some days and fewer others, and logging longer hours but a shorter work week. In addition, employers with multi-site operations can offer workers the ability to choose where they work. By doing so, organizations can give female staff members more choices and voice in their work, so that they can balance personal and family needs with their job commitments.

Frontline success systems make it possible for employers to test flexible scheduling programs. They can use these tools to communicate why they’re offering new options, roll them out with a subsection of workers and conduct surveys to see if they’re popular.

● Enabling staff to better manage personal finances: Providing frontline staff with long-range visibility into schedules, including the number of hours they’ll be working, improves their ability to forecast pay and manage their finances. In addition, organizations can publicize upcoming shifts that need more workers or offer extra gig-style hours.

Frontline success systems make it easier to offer a wide range of scheduling options and align them to production and other work requirements. Workers benefit by being able to increase hours when they want to, earning more money. Employers benefit by having fewer empty shifts and freeing up managers to do more strategic work than shift planning.

Give Female Frontliners More Flexibility

The good news is that employers are more interested and aware of the things frontline workers need and want to be happy in their jobs. This is leading them to offer new benefits around scheduling and career development.

Providing female workers with control over their schedules, the chance to earn more money when they want to and the ability to provide feedback on shift scheduling and other practices can help employers retain these valuable team members.

When it comes to empowering female frontline workers with greater flexibility, it’s time to prioritize their needs. Deploy innovative scheduling practices and watch these female staff members flourish and grow on the job while companies increase retention and productivity.