During both my time leading Snagajob, the nation’s largest marketplace for hourly workers and employers, and here at goHappy, the common denominator for our customers who have the highest engagement levels among their frontline employees, is that they make their company culture one of their top strategic priorities. Sure, it takes time and resources, but they know that the investment makes such a difference to their bottom line.
• Show gratitude by giving shout-outs to employees in pre-shift meetings and through your messaging platforms.
Here are just a few things those companies do that you might want to consider for engaging your new frontline workers:
• Make it easier for employees to communicate back to leadership.
• Share the name and picture of a new employee before their first day so everyone on your team can welcome them. • Assign a work “buddy” to show them the ropes in addition to their manager or trainer. • Seven days in, send the new employee an onboarding survey to see how they’re doing. Consider doing this again after 30 or 60 days. For your veteran frontline employees, the companies we work with that have the highest levels of engagement do a variety of things:
• Encourage employees to give shout-outs to each other in the same way. • Introduce “living the values” competitions each month, and recognize an employee who embodies your company’s spirit.
• Request fun things, like pictures for a Pet of the Week contest or recipe ideas. A few final thoughts We’re all busy. But, engaging your frontline has to be a priority. It has to be intentional. In order to do that, you need a process for it and ideally a platform that makes it much easier for you to show much you do value them. Because when you do, your frontline team members will feel that heightened emotional connection. They will be more engaged, which means they’ll perform at such a higher level. And, it will make it a heck of a lot less likely that they’ll even think of leaving.
Shawn Boyer is the Founder and CEO of goHappy, the most inclusive way to communicate and engage with your frontline hourly workforce. Among the businesses goHappy assists to improve frontline communication are Chick-fil-A, Bojangles, Chuck E. Cheese, Hand & Stone and many others with frontline workers. Prior to goHappy, Shawn founded and was CEO of Snagajob, the nation’s largest marketplace for hourly workers and employers, from 2000-13 and then Chairman of the Board through 2015. Shawn directed Snagajob’s rapid growth from an idea to a marketplace that now has over 80 million members and over 500,000 employer locations. Snagajob was named to Fortune Magazine’s Great Place to Work® Best Small & Medium Workplaces list for eight straight years (including five Top-10 finishes and a #1 ranking in 2011) and was a Deloitte Technology Fast 500 company for five consecutive years. In 2008, he was named the National Small Business Person of the Year by the U.S. Small Business Administration and received public recognition from President George W. Bush.
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