Why are Frontline Workers Quitting at an Exponential Rate?

The world has been experiencing a shift with regard to how the overall workforce feels, thinks, decides, and performs across any industry or sector.

Frontline workers, or deskless workers, are crucial in retail, hospitality, manufacturing, healthcare, and other sectors dependent on persons to interact directly and serve as the primary point of contact between a customer or a public member and an organization. Frontline workers typically work in the field, public spaces, grocery and retail stores, banks, job sites, warehouses, and healthcare facilities, among others. Frontline workers can include the retail sales associates who assist customers in stores, hotel staff who interact with guests, healthcare professionals who provide patient care directly or indirectly, customer service representatives who handle inquiries and resolve issues, and bank tellers who assist customers with their financial transactions.

There are many more that can be added to an ever-growing list, but workers such as these represent the products, services, and brands they work under, and influencing customer satisfaction is a core responsibility. Companies have been adding a personal touch to brand experience by having tentative customers being served by shopping assistants for some time now. Besides creating the ‘high-quality factor’, such services impart a sense of importance upon customers and serve to market a brand further for services well provided and for overall good experience, and promotion or posting of digital media of such instances on social media in real time go a long way to drive brand value.

Also, frontline employees, strategically hired, appropriately trained, and treated respectfully create long-term values within a company or organization. With much importance riding on the shoulders of such individuals in the workforce, companies and organizations have been focusing keenly on expanding the numbers at establishments and other mentioned locations and outlets, but this is proving to be an uphill task currently, due to resources making a beeline for more lucrative opportunities, and few or none taking their place.

Deskless and Vulnerable to Risks From All Directions on The Frontline

The world has been experiencing a shift with regard to how the overall workforce feels, thinks, decides, and performs across any industry or sector. The decline in existing frontline workers increased post the lifting of lockdowns and social distancing norms implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic. The withering pipeline of newcomers into such types of employment has only been further pronounced as frontline positions are difficult to fill and responses to job openings have been seeing few or no takers. Initially, it was believed that the COVID-19 pandemic triggered the rapid slump in numbers of frontline workers, but surveys and studies indicate that the trend had already begun years before the outbreak. The fact that it coincided with the ‘great resignation’ and mass layoffs and downsizing adopted by numerous companies only served to add momentum to the trend.

Yet the pandemic may have to some extent further fanned the fire of frontline workers feeling left out in the cold, and one plausible cause, among others, for many taking drastic measures could be the freedom of working remotely or from home. The trend during and for some time after the pandemic enabled the usually deskbound employees in majority of other sectors and industries – some were literally forced - to work from home, offered assistance to set up a home-based workspace, and even given the option of flexible work hours to accept. The frontline workers on the other hand, did not have any such options, and when they did go out into the field and to their respective locations of employment on minimum wages or hourly pay bracket, it did not entail being offered anything extra or different despite the risks involved. This trend however reportedly did not have the same effect on every frontline worker, and an equal number seemed fine with working in person or being physically available at their designated locations or workplaces during the pandemic. For most, given the nature of their chosen employment, it was a given that being a deskless employee without remote working benefits was what they signed up for after all.

For healthcare workers on the frontline however, fears were presumably driven further home upon the realization that incentives – if any were offered - did not justify the risks, they were not getting much-needed support in testing times, manager behavior was allegedly inappropriate for some, uninformed or poor communication regarding shift extensions and overtime caused stress, anxiety, and burnout, and for many the personal and emotional costs were too high to flirt with the potential dangers. Other factors that drove employees on quitting sprees include dissatisfaction with the job, reducing interest level brought on by lack of job security, inadequate flexibility or predictability in the work schedule, and a sense of not being sufficiently appreciated, among others.

New Generation Workforce Seeks Better Pay and Respect

Companies have been struggling with talent retention and reinvigorating new frontline worker talent pipelines for a while now. Reasons being not many are willing to work on hourly basis, the lockdowns and distancing norms brought out the worst in customers and the experiences many frontline workers were subjected to may have led to some of them needing some level of counselling assistance and mental health care. Caregivers and healthcare frontline workers were also stretched to their limits due to short staffing, extended work shifts, fear factor, impolite and violent customers or patients, and the entire pandemic period has left them psychologically scarred, besides being disillusioned.

Much of the hospitality sector came to a standstill as borders had been sealed and domestic customers went into isolation. Hourly workforces stood to lose much owing to low footfalls, high stress environments, and no income in way of tips, which ideally make up a good chunk for those in the hospitality industry. Essential workers also forayed into different fields or altogether left the workforce, and the period between mid-2021 and 2022 start, marked a historic frontline labor shortage.

Though many employers did not have plans in place as the coronavirus outbreak was too sudden, most were also trying to make sense of the ongoing chaos and merely trying to regain balance and stay afloat. Across 2021 and well into 2023 however, scores of frontline workers continued to quit for higher paying jobs and opportunities, majority were willing to settle for some level of job security, and almost all desired stronger work-life balances. Those among who companies managed to retain were reshuffled internally, or placed into roles with better pay or offered some flexibilities to cater to their expectations.

Though companies have been offering competitive pay and additional benefits for workers on the frontlines as part of the solution to attract and retain talent, the efforts are yet to reflect desired outcomes as estimated for 2023. A number of expert suggestions have come to the fore with mention of employers needing to demonstrate respect, value, and care towards workers, besides providing similar benefits as those being offered to desk-bound and salaried corporate employees to attract and retain frontline talent. Also, suggestions include enabling frontline workers or hourly employees with fluid communication and some forms of interaction and inclusivity to build more robust work culture, drive productivity, and enhance job satisfaction.