Your maturity result: BeginnerIntermediateAdvanced

Beginner

Intermediate

Advanced

Your maturity results by pillar

Beginner

Your score means your frontline digital-transformation and operationalization initiatives are at the beginner stage of maturity. When examining how beginner organizations in our study compare to their more mature peers, Forrester recommends that beginner firms take the following steps within the four operational pillars of frontline work to jumpstart their frontline digital-transformation journeys. 

Overall: Prepare your workforce for a long-term transformation away from previous patterns, some of which are now habitual. Prioritize the operational pillars where you can make the most progress the quickest so you can demonstrate commitment and success to managers and frontline workers alike. Physically visit a site/store/location to observe inefficiencies and to understand friction points you can address. Establish a pattern of using journey mapping to understand friction points you can address and continually gather feedback on any changes as you make them. Set the goal to:

• Move away from paper/non-technology.
• Streamline the number of tools you use to engage employees across the four operational pillars.
• Embrace the bring-your-own-device ethos by ensuring technology is accessible on personal mobile devices and does not stop at the location or manager level.

1. Scheduling

   Reduce manager stress and give frontline employees the flexibility they desire by giving employees self-service and shift-swapping abilities.

2. Communications
   • Move to a single method for communication among peers and with managers and adopt a tool that can also be used for messaging to and from senior leadership.
   • Eliminate reliance on unsanctioned communications methods (e.g., text messaging, social-media messaging, messaging apps, etc.)
   • Broaden communication styles by incorporating different media beyond text (e.g., video, images, GIFs). Enable communications to be created at all levels of the organizational hierarchy.
3. Task management

   Consolidate tasks into a single digital view that both managers and frontline workers can work from interactively while reporting completion back to HQ.

4. Training/learning

   Make completing required training easier to find, easier to complete, and easier to act upon by delivering it in the flow of work.

Intermediate

Your score means your frontline digital transformation and operationalization initiatives are in the intermediate stage of maturity. Forrester recommends that intermediate firms take the following steps within the four operational pillars of frontline work to advance their frontline digital transformation journeys to the ranks of the most mature firms.

Overall: Break away from the middle and move toward advanced maturity by fully evaluating all four operational pillars to see where your organization needs improvement with an emphasis on streamlining how these things work together to make a single “digital frontline workplace" super app on which frontline workers can easily get what they need and managers can easily support them. Include more workers and managers in advising you on the next features and functions to implement. Set the goal to:

• Advance your firm’s frontline technology to deliver a single-access point for all four operational pillars.
• Introduce personalization into your technology.
• Increase the role of automation in everyday tool use to reduce manager time and effort.
• Support frontline workers' career paths with greater learning opportunities.

1. Scheduling
   • If not yet enabled, offer employees self-service and shift-swapping abilities in scheduling processes to give frontline employees the agency and flexibility they desire.
   • Explore options for frontline workers to work across locations, departments, and roles to provide more variety and flexibility.
   • Begin to automate scheduling steps to reduce the hours of effort currently required by managers.
2. Communications
   • Enable bidirectional communication among peers, managers, and leadership by adopting a tool that uses automatic segmentation that allows for noiseless messaging.
   • Regularly measure the effectiveness of organizational communications to determine how well the tools work but also how unified the culture is.
3. Task management
   • Automate task creation and planning while allowing for execution flexibility like assigning tasks to specific shirts or task pools.
   • Allow for tasks to be completed and verified while employees are on the floor.
4. Training/learning

   Deliver microtraining that drives a culture of learning rather than one that pulls employees out of productive states to work through lengthy courses.

Advanced

Congratulations, your score means your frontline’s digital and operational maturity is advanced! However, you can continue to take proactive steps to extend your frontline digital-transformation efforts and improve frontline EX. Forrester recommends that advanced firms take the following steps to continue building a technology-enabled and happier frontline.

Overall: Cement your position as a highly mature organization by doubling down on data analytics, culture management, employee enrichment, and workforce operationalization. At this point, finish clearing up any remaining technology challenges and replace any tech that hasn't been supporting your overall maturity. Use these tools to keep executive leadership confident in their approach to frontline management. Set the goal to:

• Develop an agile approach to iterating and acting on ongoing needs for improvement.
• Put data analytics at the center of your approach to empower individual employees, managers, and executives with real-time insight.
• Build location-specific and organizationwide culture to make the most of the tools available.
• Become an employer of choice with well-publicized EX statistics.
• Reduce the noisy communication, tasks, and learning, and consolidate with technology that delivers everything in one app.
• Eliminate any remaining tools that duplicate the capabilities of your unified frontline employee app.

1. Scheduling

   Offer employee self-service availability and shift-swapping into your scheduling processes while pooling and sharing labor across locations and brands to reduce your total number of employees while ensuring adequate coverage.

2. Communications
   • Focus on using communications to build a culture grounded in the real experiences of the frontline workers, rally them to succeed in creating customer value, and recognize and reward them when they do so.
   • Communicate relevant content to chosen audiences with automated and dynamic audience segmentation.
3. Task management
   • Continue automating task creation and planning.
   • Put the exact right task in front of the right person at the exact right moment by using location- and context-aware tools.
4. Training/learning
   • Use the completion of training/learning to automatically unlock new shifts and assigned tasks.
   • Recognize employees for having the motivation to expand their roles in support of the organization's mission.