Think about the people who are truly indispensable In the NHS it’s the medical teams who interact with you and your family – or perhaps the cleaners who make hospitals safer by the work they do. It’s the brickies and chippies who put together the house you live in.
It’s the Tube drivers and maintenance workers who make sure you can get to work or to that football game or concert.
During the pandemic, we recognised (perhaps for the first time) the importance of front line workers, and acknowledged that it was they who were taking greater risks, often for less reward.
And yet so many change initiatives seem to focus most of the effort on knowledge workers or to treat front line workers as predominantly a cost to be reduced, or a disgruntled group to be managed.
What is a frontline worker?
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the term had a very specific meaning. At Epion, we take a broader view; a frontline worker is anyone who delivers the products or services your organisation offers. This could be serving customers, caring for patients, working with the public or undertaking manual work in factories or on construction sites. It could also be skilled technical work building or maintaining infrastructure.
From this list, it’s easy to see how diverse and varied a frontline worker’s job can be, and this is why delivering change for frontline workers needs a radically different approach. Sadly, most business cases lump employees together as ‘end users’. Or, worse, only consider the needs of the office staff or supporting functions (Finance, HR, IT, Sales & Marketing…etc).
While the work tasks of these ‘knowledge workers’ are remarkably consistent across organisations (mostly emailing/messaging, creating documents, or sitting in meetings), frontline workers can have dramatically different needs, even within the same organisational unit. Delivering a one-size-fits-all approach to change for these staff is a recipe for poor engagement and resistance, with all the associated costs: absenteeism, high turnover, low productivity and toxic behaviours.
How is our approach different?
At Epion, we have a consistent, proven approach to delivering change for frontline workers using our 5Es methodology: Envision, Engage, Embrace, Equip, Embed
1. Engage
First we need to engage those impacted by the change to understand their unique ways of working. For frontline workers, this often includes factors such as:
Safety-critical work
Physical work
Shift patterns
Lack of dedicated device
Low digital literacy OR very specific systems unique to their roles
Geographically dispersion or no fixed place of work
This means getting out in the field. We are often surprised by how many consultants have never visited a depot, branch, delivery unit or site. To truly empathise with staff, we think it’s vital to visit them where they work. It also helps build trust, develop an understanding of what really happens on site, and gathering practical ideas from tangible experience.
2. Envision
Sadly, many frontline workers bear the brunt of budget pressures and can suffer from low morale or competing demands on their limited time. This can lead to low trust in management, especially if there has been a history of change being ‘done to’ them. To help them envision a positive future state, we tackle this head on by:
Listening first – this community often has valuable insights and the act of listening shows respect. We don’t assume we know best; we seek to understand challenges and ways of working before developing a shared vision of the future.
Co-creating solutions – we can’t customise everything, but there are always some elements of the solution or approach which can be adapted to incorporate feedback. Sharing ownership helps those impacted feel positive about the change and more willing to commit to the future state, making it much more likely the change will be adopted.
Acting with integrity – at Epion, integrity is one of our core values and one we bring to every aspect of our work. Frontline workers can be cynical due to past experiences, so it is essential we do what we say and continue to check in throughout the life of the project
3. Equip
We equip frontline workers with a combination of timely communications and user-friendly upskilling materials to help them understand what the change means for them. It is essential these are tailored to the specific needs of the role: generic materials are confusing and off-putting.
Leverage the culture – frontline communities often have strong and unique cultures, such as artefacts, acronyms and stories that give a strong sense of ‘how things are done’. We use the language and channels that are the existing information currency rather than ‘corporate speak’.
Make life easier – it should go without saying, but any change should make life easier not harder for your people. Our communications and learning activities focus on the aspects of the change which will make it easier for them to get work done. The rest is superfluous.
4. Embrace
By laying foundations of respect, trust and integrity, frontline workers are much more likely to embrace the change.
Campaigns – it’s easy to underestimate the pull of old habits. There’s no getting away from the need for volume here, delivered as a consistent, well-integrated campaign. Without trivialising the process, it’s important to make it fun and exciting through creative communications and engagement activities in the run-up to, during and after the change is live.
Celebrating success – we all like to be appreciated for our efforts, and sometimes it’s even more enjoyable to praise others. That’s why we try to gather real-world examples of people succeeding both during and after the change, while also setting up mechanisms for those impacted to celebrate each other. In a frontline environment, peer recognition is generally far more valued that anything we or some senior bigwig can offer (although sometimes this can add weight to a success story).
5. Embed
Many change methodologies see embedding as a stage that comes at the end of a project. At Epion, we take a different view: embedding should take place throughout the life of the project.
Building a change network – these frontline staff are our eyes and ears on the ground and have the credibility and local knowledge to help us deliver the change effectively, both during and after the project.
Troubleshooting – it’s so easy for a project to drift off course, or to pursue a blinkered approach that isn’t working for those impacted. Some of the tools we use to combat this include clinics, snagging and regular reset sessions where we stand back as a project team and challenge ourselves against the original outcomes we were meant to deliver for workers. The network is invaluable here to provide rapid feedback, helping us course correct where necessary.
Skills transfer – throughout the project we are looking to make ourselves redundant. Only then can the change be fully embedded, so we look to pass on knowledge and experience, acting as coaches to our frontline change agents and the business-as-usual team so they have the confidence and tools to continue after we leave.
Each group of frontline workers has unique needs and treating them in the same way as generic office workers simply won’t work. In fact, it just pushes them further away and makes it even harder to implement change the next time.
At Epion, we customise our approach based on our extensive experience working in complex frontline environments such as critical national infrastructure, local government, central government and call centre/branch environments.
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