Connection, Community & Frontline Performance w/ JD Dillon

Speaker A: We spend a lot of time talking about frontline performance through metrics, productivity and turnover. But underneath all of that are people doing hard work every day, often under pressure, while trying to feel supported by people and systems around them. My name is Noah Mithresh and today we're joined by JD Dhillon, former Disney leader, frontline enablement strategist, and author of the new book the Frontline Enablement Plan Playbook. One of the strongest themes throughout the book is the idea that connection and community are not separate from frontline performance. They shape whether people stay, whether teams trust each other, and whether great work is actually sustainable in these high pressure environments. JD Is one of our favorite voices in this space because he brings a very candid, practical perspective to deskless work and doesn't romanticize the realities of frontline operations. JD before we dive in, you've said companies often design for a workplace that doesn't actually exist. When did you first realize that there was such a disconnect between how leaders talk about frontline culture and what frontline work actually feels like day to day?

Speaker B: My first day at my first job, because I did, I started my career doing what a lot of people do, especially in frontline spaces, is you go to the onboarding, you sit in a room, you might click next to continue a bunch of times, or you watch videos and they explain to you what work is supposed to be like, right? The company, culture, mission, vision, values, kind of the basics of the job. I remember one of the first videos I ever watched as an employed human being was about customer service, because, you know, customers, customer service, business. And it was about the last method, listen, apologize, solve, and thank. Which is, to be fair, something I've used for my entire existence because it was literally the first thing I was ever trained on. But I very quickly realized customer interactions don't look like that in real life. When you actually face off against someone who is displeased with the level of service or the experience they're having with your business. So I think it's very quick when it comes to the picture that's painted for you. And sometimes it's the job, sometimes it's before day one. Uh, I find the quick quit problem is a unique problem to frontline workforces because in corporate jobs, you usually hang around for a little bit unless something is very, very wrong because you went through rounds and rounds of interviews and took months, if not longer, to find that job. A lot of frontline employees don't come back from lunch on the first day. And in a lot of cases. It's because this was not what I signed up for. I was sold one job. The job description read a particular way. I was told I'm going to do this type of work, and I show up and I'm doing that type of work. Or it's just not the vibe or the experience I signed up for. So, you know, the guidelines are great, the SOP is great, training standards are great. But it all has to be shaped with context and informed based on what it's actually like to do the job every day. Because your team members are going to find out very quickly if the picture that you paint in those first couple of hours is reality or if it's not, and they're going to be very willing to, to take the next alternative.

Speaker A: Where does that disconnect start? Right? Like it has to. There's people that are building the, on onboarding programs. Um, anything from setting people up on their first day, like, where does that, where's the epicenter of where that disconnect starts?

Speaker B: Have the people who are shaping that picture ever done this job before? Is one, they might just not know what they don't know. They think they know what's supposed to happen, they know what the policies say, they know what their stakeholders and subject matter experts say, but it's not real. Or two, when, um, it maybe they did the job before. So I come from frontline operations so that the reality that I face day to day is always in the back of my head when I suggest anything, advise anything, build anything, say anything. But how long has it been maybe since those folks did this job? Is doing the job and working in this environment the same as it was when they experienced it? Or are they shaping, uh, an experience that doesn't match reality? And then the third one I would add is if you're in a position where you did come from the operation and then you went into management, you went to regional management, you went to corporate, you went to learning and development or hr. There's a good chance that you had a positive experience, you stayed, you were promoted, you were successful, you didn't have the typical employee experience for whatever reason. So how closely connected are you to the people who are living that typical experience day to day, even though there never is a typical day in a lot of frontline operations? And how are you leveraging their voices to shape how you integrate people into the environment those first couple of days of training, what you prioritize and how you build that sense of connection with the team? Because there's just often the separation and an us versus them unfortunate reality when it comes to corporate employees and frontline employees. And that's why I think this is an underestimate that somewhere around 50% of frontline employees believe the company cares more about corporate teams than them. And that shouldn't be shocking.

Speaker A: And I think that kind of gets into what one of my opening questions for you was is, you know, you've spent a lot of time around operators who are deeply numbers driven. And I think that's where a lot of, like even thinking back at our last discussion, you know, you said something that stuck with me where, you know, people on the front line like that are working on the front line. They do the work for each other, right? It's like, I want to pick up the extra shift because I need to help my friend out because she needs to pick her kids up from school, something along that lines. And they're not as numbers driven around, hey, I, I'm going to pick up that extra shift because I want headquarters to reach their, their goals, their revenue goals. Right? Um, so if I'm a skeptical coo, listening to this thinking, connection is nice, but my real problems are labor costs, turnover, staffing instability, and productivity. Why should I believe investing in community and belonging will impact those outcomes? And if you have any sort of, like, stories to share, um, of how you've seen that play out in the real world,

Speaker B: first, don't listen to me. And second, don't listen to your HR team. Listen to your own operation. Go out and talk to the people in your most profitable locations. So your retail stores, manufacturing facilities, healthcare centers, grocery stores, what have you. And I can almost guarantee, based on experience as both an operator and, uh, an enablement team member, you're going to find that most of those most profitable, most impactful, most effective locations have two things in common. First, you're going to find that they're led by exceptional managers, people that have figured out how to balance corporate mandate, corporate priority, and the everyday disruptive, unpredictable reality of running these types of facilities. And they're the kind of people and the kind of managers that team members aren't willing to leave because they're not willing to risk going somewhere else. And they're the kind of people that their team members are willing to go the extra mile for. So you're going to find exceptional managers at the helm of those operations. And then two, you are likely to find that the teams in those locations have some level of unique connection, unique bond. There's a team atmosphere at play that doesn't exist in your more challenging operations. And there's something different about their motivation and their willingness to work hard, like you said, in support of one another, not necessarily corporate outcomes, but you're benefiting from that additional motivation. So they're not necessarily connected to the company, the mission per se, as much as they are to the shared success of the team. And then the real question you need to be asking is not, you know, why. Why is investing in community important? It's how do you scale that across the entire operation, right? What, what types of systems and tools and enablement can you put in place? Because every, every site might have the same goals, right? Might have the same tools, might have the same technology. What differs is the people. And I know some environments might be in different neighborhoods, right? Different operating environments. There's a lot of variability inside of frontline teams. But what makes the biggest impact is the people who are present and how those people engage in the work. And when you go out and you talk to. I've done a lot of work in grocery. As an example, I worked with one large grocer, and I was, uh, over the course of several weeks, meeting different families who owned the different grocery stores within this chain. And along the way, I just kept hearing one name. People kept saying, oh, you going to visit his stores? Oh, you're going to see some stuff. Oh, oh, uh, we can't do what he can do. And there was this reverence for this one particular operator. And then I got to his stores, and I immediately felt the difference. He sold the exact same products. It was a grocery store. He did actually have a, uh, daycare center. It was the first time I ever ran into a daycare center in a grocery store where people could drop off their kids, go to shopping, pick up the kids and leave. Hadn't seen that yet. Have you ever seen a grocery store with a yoga studio? I've also seen that. But there, uh, was a vibe about this gentleman, how he managed his business and how that echoed across the team inside of a store that looked just like the other stores that I visited. And the other operators saw it, too. And if you looked at his financial results, he was on top of that mountain for a reason. And it wasn't because he had different products or different services. It was how that team operated those stores. And it was the envy of the chain of stores. Um, and I remember it was a great conversation. Very nice guy, clearly knew what he was doing and was clearly respected by the team that was working with him. So it's those dynamics and the question is, well, how do we scale that across our operation? Because it's not about finding magical people every time. Sometimes you have those people who just uniquely get it and are uniquely capable of running a team in these challenging environments. But you can scale that level of engagement, that level of connection, that level of community. If you integrate it as part of your operational plan, don't consider it as a secondary. That's a people and culture thing. That's an HR thing. No, it's part of operational execution. And I find that connection's often the unlock for driving the type of efficiency and effectiveness you're looking for in frontline teams. It's just not necessarily in the answer.

Speaker A: This individual that was crushing his numbers and making really the environment that people are working in exceptional. Can you teach that? Like you said, yes, you want to find a way to scale that, but do some people just have that magic touch or character about them, and do you have to go and find those people to make that successful? Or is that something that you can scale and you can teach? If so, like, how the heck would you do that?

Speaker B: For me, it's a combination of factors. One, yes, there are people like that. I think when you're constructing a team, maybe you're building, opening, uh, a new location, you're building an opening team, or you're just recruiting managers or looking at who you're going to promote into the next department manager or location manager. Factoring in that having people that have a strong sense of team and a strong focus on the people side of the business is just an important part of the mix. On top of that, you can just make it easier for people to do these types of things. Let's take a simple example. Do you go on Reddit a lot?

Speaker A: Yes. Yeah.

Speaker B: Every frontline operation has a subreddit which has employees that are talking about what's happening day to day inside of the operation. Yesterday, as we're recording, this was a holiday. What was happening in all of these subreddits yesterday was employees were comparing notes on if their location fed them or not on this holiday. And, uh, people were showing photos of what they got at their location versus what other people got at other locations. And the consensus was it's not about the food. It's about caring. It's about knowing. I'm, um, here on a holiday. Yes. I might be getting holiday pay. That's great. But we used to have a manager who on the holidays would make hamburgers out back. Love that manager. We don't have that manager anymore. Dun, dun, dun. So you might not have the person anymore, but you as a company, are you one prioritizing this? Did you send a reminder to all of your locations? It's a holiday. We expect this of you. This isn't an add on. This is something that you do as part of running a team and leading the operation. Are you providing supplies and budget? Are you making sure that it's not the manager? Because in some cases managers are bringing in their own stuff, right? They're making food at home and potlucking it so that their people can eat. Are you giving people the resources to be able to run these type of small community events? That's just a small but simple example of creating the systems, right? Making it a priority and providing the tools so that now the management team has the option to be able to lean in and do the types of things that foster connection and community and make the workplace the type of spot that you're not just gonna not wanna leave, but you're gonna try harder for. Because remember last week they showed that they cared. Last week it didn't take a lot. It just took a free lunch. Not a fancy lunch, a free lunch. Um, especially if you work in a food service business or a grocery business where it's really easy to pull off these types of moves. Um, and in my case, when I worked really late and we were closing our operations like midnight to three in the morning, I was working with a lot of younger people who worked those shifts. It was the people with less tenure. And I knew they didn't have a lot of money. So I would bring in for those late shifts, I just brought in cookies. So I would go to the local supermarket, they'd had Bogo deals on cookies in the bakery and I'd get a couple packages of cookies and bring them in, um, for late at night because I knew people didn't necessarily always pack snacks. Ah, we were going to be there for a while. Did bringing in cookies make me a better manager in the eyes of some people? It absolutely did. It wasn't the cookie though. It was the fact that, oh, he gets it, he cares enough to do that one extra thing. Wasn't super expensive, wasn't super complicated. Um, so there's ways to systematize and operationalize recognition and appreciation and community, um, so that you don't only have to rely on. Well, if we don't have one of those managers on the team, it doesn't happen. I think that's what most employees run into though, is we used to have managers like that. Now we don't. The company's not filling in that gap.

Speaker A: Rekognition doesn't have to be complicated. With Gusto, you can send rewards to anyone, frontline or office, employees and customers. You don't even need an email address. It's simple, scalable, and takes minutes to set up. Start your 30 day free trial today@gusto.com. so I don't know why people love to talk about, uh, like any post I've done or any discussion I've done, I bring up the idea of pizza parties. People pay attention, right? So when we're talking about the different ways to show appreciation and whether it be having a lunch one afternoon, like, I think something that pops into my mind is the difference between doing it intentionally or doing it as like a, hey, I think we just got to do this. And it doesn't feel like it's personalized or for a reason. Um, but what would you describe as the difference or how would you. Overall, what is the difference there when you know you are doing a pizza party at lunch for, um, say a bunch of nurses? Um, that it's. We know we've been working really hard, so we're going to put pizza in the lunchroom. And their pushback is, I do all this hard work and all we get is pizza versus what you're mentioning is, hey, I'm coming in for a holiday and I'm providing, uh, a nice lunch to show. I, I would say the difference is intentional. But what, what would you say is how do you do it differently so it doesn't get lost?

Speaker B: It's amazing how many ways companies screw this up and it's not that challenging. So I remember in one of my past jobs, the management team got together, we were all wearing aprons. We were in the break room and we had pancake breakfast. We were just making pancakes on, um, like grills in the break room for folks. Why did we do that? No reason. It wasn't a specific date and it definitely wasn't in celebration of a KPI or business goal. That's the one big place that this goes sideways is, look how much money we made. Here's a slice of pizza.

Speaker A: No.

Speaker B: Why did we bring in food yesterday? It's a holiday. We don't want you to have to pay for food. You're working here. Everyone else is off and you have to work harder today. Here's a little appreciation. Why'd you bring in cookies? Cuz we're here late. Not because I need you to hit a number for Me, it's not a trade off. The second thing this happens a lot is, oh, corporate folks are in town in the locate. They had a catered lunch for the corporate folks. Let's put the extra food in the break room. No, if you have a meeting in your location and you cater that, you cater food for the whole location. That should just be the rule because just think about how that feels. Here are the cold leftovers from the people that we really care about. That's what's going through people's heads. You might think, oh, it's nice to give people food. It is. Especially if people don't have a ton of resources, a ton of money, weren't able to pack lunch. All of those factors. But there's, there's nuance to this. It's not hard to get right, but it's very easy to get wrong. And again, if you're just, if you're curious how people talk about this stuff, just go on your subreddit. They're having this conversation. Um, but yeah, there's been a bunch of very social moments where companies have messed up recognition and thought they were doing okay because the intention might not be wrong. They think they're doing something nice. Again, they're just so removed from how people are thinking in the day to day reality of that job. It just sends the wrong message and it can demotivate and disconnect people from the workplace in a way that you weren't anticipating.

Speaker A: But wouldn't that in itself send the wrong message where, hey, we get a special lunch when corporate comes, but every other day just because they're coming to the office, we're going to celebrate. Um, when frontline workers are doing the day to day stuff, that's hard.

Speaker B: Oh, it can't be the only thing you do. That's the thing. It can't be, oh, we only get appreciated when that thing happens. It has to be part of a broader story. Um, I don't think this is not such a nuanced conversation to say, oh, we can never do something nice if it's like we can overcomplicate this. But I think it's just, that's an easy rule to set. If you are catering an activity for a group of employees in your location, you're catering an activity for the entire location. Um, you have to take into account that people work different shifts. So it can't be. The opener's got something, the closers got Leftovers can't do that. It can't be the. You have to account for the fact that people take different breaks, they don't get to control. So the pancake breakfast as an example was useful because we were there making and serving the food throughout that shift so that people got hot food. It wasn't, oh, we made it at lunchtime. You didn't have lunch until two. You get what's left over. So appreciation activities. We're talking a lot about food, but all kind of recognition and community building activities have to wrap around how the job is done, the workflow, the experience people have every day. It can't be to suit what is easiest for management or easiest for the company because people see straight through it. And it's very easy to reinforce the idea that I'm not important enough, but 100%, it can't be the, oh, uh, we only get something when quote, unquote, important people are here. No, that just has to be a bonus to be, oh, we, I come in today. I didn't know there was a big meeting today. Oh, yeah, I got food today. That's, that's awesome. And then hopefully you have meetings at other locations too, and other people get to benefit from that. And then people will say, oh, they never come to our location. Something should be happening inside of those businesses where they're like, oh, we get other stuff. Like, uh, we are shown appreciation in some m. Other way. It's not always about giving people things. Um, I just think the food thing is a very easy way to talk about how disconnected this can be. And there are some pretty big party fouls, uh, when it comes to how companies engage on online with this.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's a good way to put it. Party fouls. And yes, we're talking a lot about food, but like I said, people love the topic of pizza parties. But I think it's. There's a deeper meaning there, right? It's how are you actually showing the appreciation towards the workforce and getting it done right in a way that's meaningful. Um, and outside of just the, you know, the instances where you're rewarding and showing appreciation for the whole workforce on that day or few days as people are coming in and out on their, um, their, um, scheduled sessions. But outside of that, when you have high performers or like, what other forms of appreciation or recognition exist in Frontline that are meaningful?

Speaker B: Single most meaningful thing that you can do is ensure your managers understand the importance of appreciation and how to convey appreciation in ways that make sense to the people on the team. So it begins with making sure your management teams have the time and priorities and training and resources to uh, do this right. And when you're constantly overburdened and you're stepping in as a manager to fill in the blanks, when you're either short staffed or just not afforded enough labor hours, it's really hard to build relationships with people, to get to know the members of your team and then to figure out what's the right way to show someone that I appreciate them. And I think the mistake is when we default to corporate programs. And in my book, the, uh, Frontline enablement playbook held up awkwardly in my hand right now.

Speaker A: I love it.

Speaker B: Um, I talk about this concept of going global with these types of strategies where global support and global enablement, but local culture, local reality. So you can have global programs and in one form or organization. We had these cards that were provided by the company that when we saw someone do something great, it could be a manager to a, uh, team member, it could be peers. Uh, you could write out one of these cards, hand it off to the person, they would rip the card in half and one half went into a box and there was a drawing for some type of prize and then the other one they kept. And what's really interesting is when I was writing the book, um, I gave out hundreds of those cards as a frontline manager. I reached out to a person I worked with 20 years ago and said, I know you still have them, don't you? And she did. And she took a photo of one of the cards I gave her 20 years ago. And the photo is in the book because that's how important recognition is. The people, uh, people kept those tacked up on boards in their, in their bedrooms and on the refrigerator at home and these types of things. So there's the global side of it, but there's also the local side of how does the management in that location and the team in that location bring the culture to life? Because you may have 100 locations in your company, you have a hundred different cultures in your business because cultures, uh, constituted by the people who are there at that moment working together to try to accomplish a shared goal. It's not something that you can enforce from corporate, it's something that you can enable and empower and set guardrails and resourcing from corporate, um, but it has to come to life inside of your location. An example, same company that had that global program with the cards we had in the location I worked at that particular time, an employee of the month program. It wasn't a company thing, it's pretty simple. Um, the first day of every month, the people who are on shift nominated three people. And it was such a big deal that people would call in that weren't even working that day to vote. And people who were working that day would call up to a certain location and vote on people. And at the end of the first shift they would name who the employee of the month was. And you just got your name on a list behind the scenes that, uh, you were. And I was employee of the month in, uh, December 2005. I still remember that because for me, because it wasn't a, wasn't a manager thing, it wasn't a company thing, it was just my peer group. It was the day that I said, I'm part of this. Like they seen me, I was a part time employee. I didn't even know I was nominated that day. I wasn't even there that day. And I found out, oh, I got that, that's cool. And here we are 20 years later, I'm still talking about it. So it's that idea of again, making sure the managers understand this is part of the job, providing them tools and resources, especially the time to be able to foster connection and community, but then not holding people back, allowing them to figure out what's the right way, uh, to bring this group together. And different groups are going to find different ways to do it. And in the book I have a bunch of different examples of what like going local can be.

Speaker A: Right. I think that's a good segue because you said something that I think is really important in today's, uh, environment especially is time. Making sure managers or the people that you're expecting to build these relationships have time to do it. Because it does take time, right? Whether you're walking the retail floor and actually talking to the employees and getting to know them. But there's also this flip side of the expectations that I think there's, you know, as we talk about the KPIs and you know, the managers are often caught between, in, in between a hard place where, hey, yes, build relationships, build great culture, make sure the employees are happy. But at the same time, on the other, the other flip side of the token is we need you to hit these numbers. We need to make sure our retention rates are healthy and all of these other reasons that are coming from more corporate, um, you know, initiatives. How is it an impossible job for a manager like the expectations that we have nowadays for them to juggle both these sides and are we setting them up to fail?

Speaker B: Essentially, there's a popular meme out There that says people don't quit jobs, they quit managers. I think it's a wild oversimplification of the situation, but I think that statement should be adjusted to people quit managers because their managers are set up to fail from the start. And when you talk about frontline managers, 80% of the global workforce works on the frontline. That means frontline managers are responsible for 80% of the global workforce. They're the vast majority of people in management positions in the working world today. And they're up against that balancing act of strategy and execution.

Speaker A: Right?

Speaker B: Corporate mandate, everyday reality. And I use some extreme examples from my own past. I spent my first half of my career as a frontline operations manager and I would go in with a plan and that plan was gone 15, 30 minutes into the shift because three closers called out sick, two customers got into a fight in the lobby, and then drama erupted between multiple of my team members and oh, by the way, the truck was late today. Today, that's, that's the job, right? We don't build or resource people for that version of the job. We build, uh, we describe the job and we shape the job as if every day goes according to plan, like the SOPs actually work. And that's again where I think it's important to, to recognize it's, we're not having an HR conversation, we're having an operations conversation that's inclusive of the people side of the business and the only way to justify staffing level improvements so that managers don't have to make up the difference themselves and they actually have not just the number of hands necessary to do the job, but the number of capable hands necessary to do the job effectively is to strongly connect. This idea of investing in people and investing in connection to outcomes that organizations are trying to achieve. Which is again why I said, if you look at your strongest operators and your strongest locations, I believe you will start to see some of this. And it's incumbent upon anyone who's supporting the business and are the people and enablement side of the business to be able to shape a business case where it's not just about what's right for people, it's not about what's fair, it's not even about numbers like employee engagement or turnover. This is a top line conversation. If we improve in these ways, I can make you more money. Which is a stronger justification to the operations team than saying if we do these things, we will have less cost. And there's one number that people constantly quote out there, which is this idea of how expensive it is to replace an employee. Right. I don't know what the exact number is. It wildly depends on what the average pay rate is inside of your particular operation. So replacing a nurse is way more expensive than replacing someone, uh, who works in a fast food business. But I see that type of justification a lot like we need to invest in improved training and people programs because look how expensive it is, uh, to replace an employee. Have you ever seen any business react based on that type of metric and say, oh look, we are losing so much money due to turnover. We will definitely. I've never seen that happen. Yeah, it's the wrong way to justify this conversation. So instead of trying to use people metric to improve people programs, we have to use business metrics to improve people programs. I think it's that shift in mindset and that shift in building the business case that'll help us try to maybe not overcome the challenge of time, but get a little bit better. Because the businesses I do see that are making improvements that are maybe shifting away from a working manager model to say, okay, we're going to free up more hours for managers to focus on leading the team and running the business than participating, uh, in the business and completing tasks every day. They're usually responding to pain. It's not that, oh, they had an idea and a transformational corporate team and they're focused on the people side. No, they started to see sales decline, customer loyalty decline, and they started to figure out where the shortcomings were in the business and suddenly they start to invest more in management team, start to compensate bonus managers more effectively, start to increase labor hours within the operation, which is the single most important thing that you can do. Right? Not saying tons of staffing, blow out the labor budget, not by any means, but a, uh, true accounting of what it takes to do the job every day. And moving away from revenue based or sales based models where you have to earn your labor budget, to budgets that are built in collaboration with the people who run the business every day to say, this is what I need to get the job done. And when I manage movie theaters, I had a constant back and forth with the corporate team to say, I will hit the numbers. You just have to let me loose. At one point, ah, a corporate team pushed on me to say, uh, for a layoff I had to remove a significant number of staff members. I said, no, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to work with the team and I'm going to hit your numbers. Hold me accountable to the end. Goal, not how I get there, because I know the team and the customers and the day to day operation let me get there and they did and I hit my numbers. So I think we have to come at the conversation differently, um, and consider how the people side of the business directly impacts operational outcomes and not have a people conversation inside of a silo where we're talking about people things.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: And then wonder why the operations team doesn't buy in.

Speaker A: Thanks won't cut it. And great job isn't enough to move the needle. Set your managers up for success with a clear, practical framework for recognition. Grab Gusto's free employee recognition blueprint@gusto.com with a lot of operations, we've talked about it a little bit or like the keywords have come up a few times with tools and systems, do you find that there's a disconnect between how tools are built and how frontline teams function? Function like, do a lot of the tools that we have nowadays fit for frontline or is there the disconnect? Because I often see, you know, tools, no matter what industry you're in, really there's the idea comes, somebody's building a tool, but they're so disconnected to how it actually gets used. Um, how do you think we are set up in this world today for, uh, especially with the likes of AI, you know, everyone's wanting to layer in AI into all their different tools and setup and systems and processes. Meanwhile, not everyone understands how to use it or how it's supposed to support us. Um, yeah. What's your take on that? Of our tools working for us today,

Speaker B: there's a major gap in the people technology side of the conversation when it comes to frontline work. It's very basic. We never talk about hardware. Technology conversations are often a software conversation, an AI conversation. And we completely miss the fact that a significant number of frontline employees don't touch screens as part of their job. If you go back to the grocery store, your access to and relationship with technology isn't about the fact that you work in a grocery store, it's what you do in that grocery store. Because if you work as a cashier, you're standing in front of the point of sale system, so you're using a screen all day. If you work in the deli, you, uh, might have a tablet behind your department. You might be working with the deli scale, which is an Internet connected device with a touchscreen on it. You work in the meat department, you might not have anything back there. And if you're pulling carts out of the parking lot and bagging groceries. You never see a screen as part of your day. So the technology conversation has to begin with an understanding of the relationship between the workflow and these different types of tools. Because if we don't have a screen or we don't have a headset, because I think we also miss the audio component of Frontline Work. If you go into a lot of clothing retailers as an example, everyone's wearing a headset. That's an access point. So we have to understand how can we reach people with information, with opportunities to engage with technology, and then shape the technology strategy around that, including choose your own device type strategy, because a lot of people are carrying their favorite device with them. Not everyone has a mobile device. Not everyone's willing to use their mobile device for work purposes, especially if they don't see clear value in it. But it should be included as part of the story. And so it takes us really understanding what's the relationship between these different roles in technology, like acknowledging the fact that no one's ever getting to the computer in the back office. So many times the only formal device in a frontline operations, a computer in a manager's office, and the manager's office is either locked or the manager's in IT doing manager things on that computer. So what are you going to do there? So I have a problem going into frontline operations now just as a customer, because I'm constantly just looking for screens and I'm very interested in what toast device the server is using at the restaurant. So we have to understand the relationship with technology and then shape solutions around that, because you could have an amazing application, you could have amazing artificial intelligence. If there's no access point, it doesn't matter. So if you have a chatbot or a digital assistant that can answer, um, questions in someone's preferred language in the moment of need.

Speaker A: Awesome.

Speaker B: Potentially changes how performance works. They have to have a device first, though. So does that mean activating devices in the workflow? Does it mean working with IT and operations to roll devices out? Is there an IT project going on today? Because during the past couple of years, we've seen more devices enter frontline operations, but there are still spots like manufacturing. You cannot bring a mobile device out on the line. And there might be shared workstations at certain places within the facility. Well, what does our digital experience look like when that's the reality that we face?

Speaker A: It reminds me, um, because I do a lot of work in HR software, right? But something that always keeps Me connected. I have a few friends that work in mining, um, and different, like, manufacturing, um, in hr. And a recent story one of my friends had was, yeah, the clocking, uh, in and clocking out at the mine sites. And they had to update one of their machines or they were updating across different locations. And she's like, I'm gonna have to fly everywhere around North America with an X amount of time to replace all of the hardware used to clock in and clock out at all of these, um, mining locations and make sure everybody is trained on the new process because they're implementing new cards and making sure everybody has the new car cards and that there's a way that they, you know, don't lose these cards. New process, um, new rules, new, uh, way to do it. And all within an unrealistic time frame. Right. She's like, I physically don't think I can m. Do all of this right. But headquarters is saying, like, well, we need this done and we need this done tomorrow. Right? There's just like the. The disconnect of reality around these and something that you had mentioned before with, um, where the people designing the processes, um, and setting those expectations are designing for a different world, right? Of what it looks like, maybe just paint a bit of a really simple picture for us of what are they designing for? What does that world look like? And what does reality actually look like?

Speaker B: Uh, they're designing for the sop. They're designing for the version of reality that's shaped based on corporate policy and practice. And it's not taking into account the unpredictable and disruptive nature of Frontline work. Most extreme example, I've dealt with a variety of machine downtimes, power, uh, outages, facility blackouts, things like that. And then there was the day that someone set my building on fire. That was a different day.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So it's. That's the extreme version, but there's some version of that happening to every frontline team member and every frontline manager throughout the course of their week. Hopefully, uh, it's minimal disruptions, but sometimes, you know, you're going about your business and unfortunately, a customer has a medical emergency, and now you're on the phone with 911 and dealing with that situation, taking an incident report for the next hour. So we have to build in for the level of flexibility necessary to execute. And hopefully it's not always emergency stuff and it's not always disruption stuff. Hopefully there's also opportunities to do great things. Opportunities to take that next level to do that extra, um, to you know, go the extra mile or go above and beyond the things that we really want people to do. But we don't give them the time, tools or resources to be able to actually do it. And then we ask them why they don't do it. So it's, it's just one. Spending more time inside of the frontline operation. I'm a huge fan of organizations that push corporate team members out of the office on a regular basis and make them work inside of the operation because it's how you feel the friction, gaining greater appreciation for the job. Now. Not. You can't necessarily do that with every job because there are certain jobs where your corporate team members just aren't qualified. The people who are doing the work on the front line are highly skilled, highly educated people. I'm not going to stand in for a nurse anytime soon. Right. I'm not going to be a phlebotomist, none of that stuff. Not an aerospace engineer. Um, but if you spend time with the people who are doing the job, you can understand what it's like to do this job even if you can't do it yourself. And then you can also invite people who do the job every day into the conversation from the beginning. We shouldn't be making unilateral decisions about how something's going to roll on the front line without people from the front line being involved in that conversation. And I always recommend don't bring your top performers into the conversation because those people are unicorns. They're different.

Speaker A: Hm.

Speaker B: They're not the average voice. And definitely don't ask managers for volunteers because they're going to send you their favorite people.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: Go into your frontline operation and ask employees. Who makes your life easier here? Who's your go to? Go get those people. Build relationships and build champions among those people. Those people are usually perceived as a bit of a pain because they care. They push, they raise their hand and they ask why things are the way they are. And sometimes that can annoy the corporate team. Those people are hugely valuable sources of information because they will articulate what actually happens every day. And then they're amazing champions because they're respected by their team members. So if they come back and say this is really helpful, like we should definitely do this. I know you don't have a ton of time. Spend time working on this. Log into this application. This is really going to help you out. I'd rather leverage their voice to advocate for solutions than mine because the frontline team doesn't want to be me in A lot of cases, they've never met me and will never meet me. However, they respect the person who does the job with them every day. But one of the smartest things I ever did when I started to move into management jobs and then learning and development jobs, was I always I referred to as putting the costume back on. I enjoyed the job. I had fun doing it. People could see I was capable of it as well. And I was good at what I did. And it's how I maintained a sense of connection with the people I was supporting. And I even did it when I was writing this book. I wrote most of the book in frontline spaces. And originally that was a gimmick. I was just going to be able to say that on podcasts and be like, you know what I did? I wrote the book on the front line.

Speaker A: Too great for marketing.

Speaker B: Pat me on the head. But what happened was, so I'm sitting in airports and hotel lobbies and restaurants, cafes, like, whatever, frontline space. I'm in a theme park at one point in the book, writing the book, and it started to trigger feeling and memory and connection, and I started to just watch. So I spent some time not writing, just observing. And in one case, one of the chapters begins, it's New Year's Eve, and I'm in a restaurant booth, which shows you how exciting a human being I am. New Year's Eve, and I'm writing a book in a restaurant. And I sat at the booth behind the restaurant manager for five hours, and I watched her not make the staff schedule for five hours because every time she sat down, something happened. Someone calls from the kitchen. An off duty employee walked in and had a question. She had to talk to a customer. Just up and down, up and down, up and down throughout the course of the day. And watching her not only inspired the story that I started to tell in the book, it caused me to go backwards in time and realize, oh, oh. And I started to connect the dots in my own experience in particular ways and elevated certain stories of my own. Um, and, uh, it helped me to connect to the reality that it's not that different. So the experience I'm seeing taking place both as a customer as well as someone who supports Frontline team members. It's really familiar. But I can't try to sit here and say, this is what you should do based on what I did 10, 15 years ago. It needs to be based on the reality of how the job is done today. So it's important for me to always maintain that connection, have these conversations, but also, uh, writing the book in frontline spaces informed the tone of the story and some of the insight shared in the story because, uh, I saw a lot of familiar scenes.

Speaker A: This should be pretty exciting. What we're doing is, uh, taking some anonymous write ins, whether it's sitting up on our computer at 1am and reading through Reddit, um, and pulling up different anonymous stories that we go, oh, that one's good. Or you know, like, there's a lot to, to dig into here. Um, either way, we bring them to the experts like you, who've actually lived this world and can speak to the issues that are happening here and we can dissect it. Um, so what's really going on here? This is a, um, this was an entry from an HRVP at a large retail company who would prefer to stay anonymous. But here's uh, what they said. I sat in a meeting last week about declining engagement scores and whether store managers were doing enough recognition. Meanwhile, one of those managers had worked nine days straight because payroll was cut. Two people quit. A hiring approval was delayed yet again. Nobody's, uh, being careless here. Leadership's under a lot of pressure too. But you can feel managers getting tired in a different way lately. Less energy, patience, and belief that things are actually going to improve. It's there, but it's still unknown. How do you know when a team is just going through a hard stretch versus slowly losing connection to work and each other? So that would be one of my first questions in terms of like, what are some early indicators of whether you can tell? Is this more of a just a moment in time, or is this something that is, you know, starting to deteriorate from a bigger picture of operations and the business as a whole?

Speaker B: I mean, first of all, there are grand signals. Like there are some frontline retailers where entire stores quit at the same time. That's a sign. In writing the book, there are 50 contributing authors in the book who worked with me to share their insights, experiences and stories. But I also talked to hundreds of other people, people along the way that included a variety of HR learning, development, operations folks and the like. And unprompted. Multiple people said the exact same words to me when talking about their frontline managers. They said the words they're broken because of one how long we've relied on frontline managers. Like, the joke is that every email ends if you have any questions, ask your manager. Like, they're the default solution for a lot of things in a lot of cases because we don't have better mechanisms we don't have better technology, we don't have better channels and tools. So everything is tell the managers, the managers will get it done.

Speaker A: Uh-huh.

Speaker B: That's what being a manager is like. A lot for me. And that continued. And then a pandemic happened and we lean on for everything. It was safety at another level, taking care of people in very different ways, being the go to, what's going to happen next. Being the go to, um, between corporate uncertainty and everyday Frontline reality. Then it didn't get easier after that. The job got harder because then labor hours started to get cut and more and more was leaning on the manager to make up the difference. And simultaneously, I know several businesses have had this happen to them. I don't know if yours has, but I'm willing to bet probably is. You also started to face, uh, um, retirements and people just walking away. So for years we were able to rely on managers who had 20, 30 years of experience, who grew up here, who know how to do everything and are magically able to balance all the things we need them to do because they're that capable and that experienced. Those people are largely gone. Management tenure has declined precipitously over the last several years.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: So we're now dealing with a younger group that has less experience, that is likely a group that got promoted into management positions to replace those senior managers. And uh, because they were good operators, not, uh, because they're good at running shifts, not because they're good at leading teams, not because they're people people. Because they were just the best salesperson in the retail store. And now we're relying on them to do everything and not affording them a ton of formal training time, not a ton of support resources. And I think the biggest one is a lack of connection between managers and their peers. And if you take retail as the example, how many stores are in your town, in your company, where's the next location? What are the odds that the store manager in one location is going to ever see, meet or know the next closest store manager? Now, you may have one on every block because you work in a very large retailer and it's easier to connect. In some cases, you might be the only store in your state. How do I connect with people like me? Because being a manager can be a very lonely existence because you're not necessarily allowed to be friends with your team members. Or you may be used to be a member of the team and now you're the boss, so you're treated differently and you're not around a peer group very often if you're the store manager or on a small team. So I think one of the strongest things that we can do to foster improved connection is connect managers to other managers. It's not a content problem, it's not a training problem, it's a connection, a community problem. And how do we understand if it's happening is we need to be talking to them on a regular basis. This shouldn't be guessing game. We shouldn't need a survey for this. We should be close enough. If you're support, if you're on the people side of the operation and yet your job to help these people be successful, you should be close enough and having conversations with these folks and have reliable champions inside of the operation who can tell you what's going on so that you know they're telling you the truth and they're going to give it to you straight. And again, it's not a bubble up thing because if you ask your, if you send a survey to your frontline managers and they know they can be identified because there's never been an anonymous survey of a frontline operation. Every employee believes that they can be identified in whatever survey you're sending out. So they don't give you the truth in a lot of ways or they give you very specific truth goes one way or the other. Um, so we shouldn't have to try to bubble this information up because especially managers who are trying to build something, they're very sensitive about what they write down and what they share and how it might blow back against them from a political perspective. So if you're an hr, you're an enablement team. It's your job to help folks overcome these types of obstacles. Step one is building the level of relationship and trust with people where they can turn to you or you're regularly having roundtable conversations or you're just regularly connected and they can say, for lack of a better term, this sucks and it's not getting better. And then you can do whatever you can to try to help them overcome it. Um, um, because I don't think a lot of this, regardless of what industry you're in, I don't think a lot of people are dealing with hard stretches right now. I think they're dealing with hard reality about how the operation has shifted the do more with less mentality.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: The huh. Focus on growth through bottom line versus growth through top line. And the managers are the ones sitting in the middle. I always say frontline managers sit in the middle seat on the Airplane, right. Corporate's on one side, the team is on the other side and there's no elbow room for them. And it hasn't gotten, hasn't gotten any easier.

Speaker A: Looking for a scalable recognition program that works for your organization's specific needs? Book a demo today and speak with Gusto's recognition experts about our flexible programs. Go to gusto.com to get started today. When Frontline. Let's think about the recognition side of things. When people feel appreciated, right. When Frontline workers genuinely feel appreciated, what actually changes? So not philosophically, but operationally. Right. Like what shifts do you see in retention or performance or the customer experience or how teams respond under pressure when this environment of recognition or appreciation exists.

Speaker B: So whenever I visit a Frontline operation, especially a place where there's competitors nearby, because there are certain types of businesses where the, like the three biggest competitors are literally in the other parking lot. Mhm. Because they're so co located. So I know people have options. So I'll ask people, why are you still here? Like why do you stay here? And the answer is always the same. It's always, I like the people I work with and I like my manager and I'm not willing to risk that somewhere else. So that feeling of connection, that feeling that I'm part of something, that feeling of belonging, which I think is directly attached to the idea of recognition and appreciation, is one significant driver of retention.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: 2. When you retain more people for a longer period of time, you have the uh, likelihood that you have a more experienced and capable team. So not only your ability to execute consistently increases, your ability to deal with whatever happens next increases. So it's less about day to day performance for me, it's more about readiness. Because if you're constantly churning people and you have 150, 200% turnover, you're just constantly retraining people just to try to get them to be able to do the basics. How are you handling the next change? Right. The next, uh, product release, the next promotion. You don't have a team that's ready to handle the most challenging customers or the next weather event or whatever is going to happen that's going to challenge your ability to execute. So readiness slips. Uh, if you don't focus on both maintaining a stable team, a connected team that feels like they're in this together, and then a well resourced team that has the tools and the training necessary to be able to do the job, uh, I'll take you to the extreme version of it, uh, to connect to a story I told earlier. So in my new book, the longest chapter in this book, by the way, the, uh, Frontline Enablement Playbook is the chapter about community. Because for me, it is the unlock for a lot of things when it comes to Frontline performance. And in the Community chapter, there's a photo. You can't really see it on camera right now, but it's a very important photo to me. Uh, that is a photo that several hundred people are standing in front of a building called the Great movie ride in 2017. I worked there in 2004, 5 and 6 in that time frame. The, uh, building opened in 1989 and closed in 2017. And when we found out it was closing, hundreds of us came back and we pulled our money and we rented a theme park and we had a party that celebrated the time that we spent together in that location.

Speaker A: Cool. Uh,

Speaker B: that's the example of what happens long term when you invest in fostering Frontline community. I've worked in a lot of Frontline locations and operations. I've never had that happen anywhere else. So it wasn't about the fact that it was a certain company. It wasn't something that happens in every location. This was a unique community of people. We were very good at what we did. We hit our numbers. We were reliable team members on the front line, but that was because we had a management team and a sense of connection, and that came with a sense of accountability. We held one another accountable. Uh, I was talking about this with someone recently, and they jogged my memory that, oh, yeah, we had a family lineage thing going in that location where someone trained me and I trained you. Therefore, you are accountable to him because he was like grandpa to a certain extent. Um, so we had this, like, intense sense of shared accountability for our performance that really drove that community forward. That's what happens, is your team members are so connected that when they leave and they go about and they do their own thing and they start different careers, they come back and they spend a night, hundreds of people celebrating, and they take a photo. There's a guy on a crane taking that photo to get all of us in the building, in the shot. Um, so I think, is that. Is that a unique experience? Yes. But I would say if you closed a plant or a restaurant or retail store, would the people come back and have a night where they celebrated the fact that this was meaningful to them, even though it happened 10, 15, 20 years ago? I think that's the difference that you see in organizations that really lean into and understand the operational value of connection and community. So there's clear people metrics that improve. They give you the ability to be more ready to execute in order to achieve your goals. Um, but there's something deeper at play that I think we don't recognize when it comes to the connection point between enablement, performance and community.

Speaker A: Right. It's like your corporate brand or your culture. Right. It's what people say about you when you're not in the room or the actions they take. Right.

Speaker B: That photo is culture brought to life. And I don't think we were sitting there saying that, uh, that night. But I'm really proud of the fact that I get to share that photo in a book because more people get to see it, it gets to live on. And I think it's a shining example of what can happen when you prioritize connection alongside operational execution.

Speaker A: Mhm. You'll have to share that photo with us so we can blow it up on the screen so people can see. Um, but where did you get your background in this? Or like you said, you started out in Frontline and that's where you started to gain some of this experience. But what led you down this path to have, I don't know, the superpowers that you do. Right. Because there's a lot of people that would have started where you did and go through maybe some of the, the same channels, but they're still doing the status quo of what is maybe typically expected. And they'll just continue to go down that path and they want to make changes, but maybe they're stuck in certain ways. But like, what set you apart? Like what, where, where was your break off point where you're like, I'm good at this and I'm going to dig into this, I'm going to learn more about this to become, um, in the position you are today.

Speaker B: We're going back to my first day at my first job. Again, because I was scared on my first day. The, uh, book begins on that day. The first word in this book is fear. Because that's what I felt. I wasn't uncertain or uncomfortable. I was afraid. And I accidentally ran into the right trainer. And he understood that I was afraid and he did what was necessary to make me feel comfortable. When I served my first guest, uh, standing at a cash register where I'd never counted money before or worked with a point of sale system or made food or any of these things, he's, uh, standing right there to make sure I'm okay. That sentiment echoed through every decision I made after when I became a supervisor and a manager and then a learning and development professional and a technologist. And. And it's those experiences that informed how I approach this work and how I advise people. And I think what's important though, is to acknowledge this isn't about altruism. Uh, it's not about doing what's right for people. I believe in order to be able to do what's right for the frontline, we have to do right by the business first. Uh, it has to be in service of outcomes, it has to be in service of value. But I know you can balance both factors and it doesn't always require giant changes. Like the tagline on the back of the book says every shift counts. And it's a play on the word shift, because every time someone clocks in, it's an opportunity to learn something new, to make a difference, to solve an important problem and to contribute and to be proud of what you do every day. And at the same time, every small shift that we can make has an outsized potential impact on, uh, not just people's ability to do the job, but on their lives every day. And I made a decision really early on. I was going to be very good from an operational perspective. I was going to hit my numbers and, and I was going to be the type of manager that people came to because that's what I needed when I got started. And not every manager is that way. Not every manager has to be that way. You have different members of your team and they have different strengths and different opportunities, and that's fine. But I just wanted to be the person who made this opportunity or this role more than the day to day. This was a chance to feel proud and to learn something or to figure out where you want to go next. And I 100% acknowledge most frontline employees are doing the job because it's a job. They need the paycheck, and that's perfectly fine. Not everyone is here to build a career. I think we make a mistake when we assume everyone's here for the long term. Everyone deserves an opportunity to see what opportunity exists. Right? Most people are not going to take that road. That's not what they're here to do. But I firmly believe every employee wants to do a good job. They don't want to get yelled at. They to don't want, they definitely don't want to get hurt while they're at work today. And it just requires a little bit, right, a little bit of added investment, a little bit of effort, and especially requires a management team that is prioritized and resourced and pointed in the right direction because the manager changes everything. And if we get that right, we create the type of grocery store I mentioned at the beginning of the conversation that is this transcendent part of the brand that everyone looks up to, right?

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: Not the product mix, it's not the pricing that's making that happen, it's that management group that's doing that. And again I've seen it over and over again, all different types of locations. Um, it is possible to do this right and when we do it right, we change people's lives. They have a better experience in the day to day work. They're able to balance their professional and personal responsibilities, they're able to increase their earning potential and they drive results that matter for the organization. So we can check all of those boxes and it just requires that mindset that you know, every small shift counts.

Speaker A: Agreed. And there's something that always brings me back, um, to what's important is the saying around. And I'm not going to say this perfectly but you know, people don't necessarily remember what you did, but they remember how you make them feel. Right. And I think that's really key for managers. It kind of encompasses a lot of what you've mentioned where, hey, building the relationships, understanding your people, knowing how to show appreciation in a way that's meaningful. Right?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Time connection.

Speaker B: Strangely, strangely timey story to wrap on. I had um, breakfast with someone this morning on the day we were recording this.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: I don't think the server recognized me. She was a team member of mine 15 years ago.

Speaker A: No way.

Speaker B: I haven't thought of her in a long time because it just didn't come up. And I've worked with thousands of frontline team members over the years. What was interesting was as soon as I saw the name tag, I started to kind of flip through this Rolodex in my head of I remembered everything about her. I haven't thought about her in years. But I could tell you exactly where we worked. I could tell you exactly what type of team member she was. I could tell you exactly what type of support she needed. I could tell you exactly what our relationship was like. I'm not meaning to toot my own horn here and say I'm an amazing manager. I think I was very good at the job. But I think that's what happens when you're able to balance and prioritize the people side of the operation in service of outcomes is you make the extra effort to know People as people, not as team members and not as employees. And that makes a difference. If people are going to stay, if they're going to. If they're going to extend their shift because you asked them to, if they're going to try a little harder, if they're going to take on an unfamiliar or uncomfortable task, that's when people take that extra step, go that extra mile, and they do it in service of, again, that team and that manager. But it requires, uh, a different type of prioritization. And I think I didn't come to that myself. I had the right experiences and I worked alongside some great peers and I tell stories about them in the book. Um, they were my training, uh, to be able to do what I did. And I just kind of had this reflective moment this morning. I was like, I remember. It's not just I remember you. I remember us and the experience that we had 15 years ago, uh, inside of a Frontline operation. So it was a fun reminder.

Speaker A: Wow, that's a good way to start the day before an interview like this. Uh, well, Judy, I really appreciate the time you've taken today to chat with us. It's always a great conversation. I think there. It's very rare that you find people that are so in tune with what the reality is of the frontline workforce. And again, 80%, that is not a small number. So it matters. Right. Um, but, uh, any final words that you would like to share about your book? Congratulations as well on the release of your recent book. Um, any key takeaways or anything that you want to mention, um, before we wrap up here today.

Speaker B: Sure. So if you'd like to grab a copy of the Frontline Enablement Playbook, uh, It's available at frontlineplaybook.com or anywhere awesome books are sold. Uh, there's also, uh, a companion initiative that I've kick started starting last week at the ATD International Conference called Every Shift Counts. So the idea is not just to advocate for a book, it's to advocate for the frontline workforce and the people who support them every day. So if you go to every shiftcounts.com that's the initiative website, you, uh, can sign up for the deskless newsletter where I'll be telling stories about and inspired by the frontline workforce on a weekly basis. There, there's a swag shop with frontline related merchandise, 50% of profits being donated to, uh, Fight Food Insecurity. Um, and just some ideas and hopefully some more research and partnerships and different things I can do working with different organizations to continue to drive this conversation and to help uh, organizations make those small but meaningful shifts every day. So, uh, frontlineplaybook.com every shiftcounts.com and happy to connect. If there's anything that I can do to support uh, your team or help you, uh, enable your frontline teams and service of business results, you can find me@jddyllen.com and also connect with me on LinkedIn.

Speaker A: Amazing. Uh, you keep yourself busy, that's for sure. Um, but appreciate you again coming and joining us on the podcast and being a voice for the frontline workforce. I think it is something that is, is so important. Um, and we need to continue to educate ourselves more on and make sure that we're connected to the people and not forgetting why we're all here. So again, JD appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Speaker B: Thank you.

Speaker A: If you found value in this podcast and want to help others improve their culture, be sure to follow us and leave a rating and review. Better yet, help us get the word out and share this episode with your colleagues, colleagues and peers. Until next time, stay classy. HR.