Growing companies in fast-changing markets must be agile and adaptable. And frontline managers are essential to ensuring the effective, nimble operations these companies need.
But frontline managers are often bogged down with time-consuming administrative tasks that prevent them from providing this value. They must attend to scheduling, recruiting, and training. They often manage a jumble of software and apps to organize their team’s work and communicate with their employees.
Coping with myriad mundane and repetitive tasks and non-optimized communications deprives managers of the bandwidth required to provide visionary leadership to their teams. This shortfall demotivates employees and disadvantages their companies.
According to the Gallup State of the Global Workplace report, today’s employees want their bosses to function like coaches—strategic partners who can leverage employees’ strengths instead of highlighting their weaknesses. They want ongoing reciprocal communication with management.
Managers who can provide a more communicative, supportive, collaborative style of engagement will have happier, more productive employees who will stick around. But when managers are overwhelmed by administration and disorganized workflows, they can’t manage effectively, leading employees to disengage from work. It’s a red flag for companies that 85% of employees today are not engaged or are actively disengaged at work.
Digital tools enable effective management
If given the right tools, managers can be well positioned to ensure that the frontline workforce is supported, equipped to embrace change, and engaged in the company’s work.
But too often these tools are disparate—a jumble of apps and services that adds a management burden on top of everything else managers are juggling. WorkJam Digital Workplace solves this problem by putting a suite of useful management tools into one platform. This enterprise-class solution helps frontline managers proactively engage and efficiently manage their teams without adding to their administrative burden. WorkJam integrates shift management, onboarding, communication, training, and other features to free up managers’ time to work on the priority tasks of leadership, employee engagement, and workflow management.
WorkJam’s Digital Workplace Platform includes open shift marketplace technology, which allows managers to crowdsource qualified employees from a local or regional area to easily make sure all shifts are covered. Gamification of training and professional development helps them train employees and provide ongoing learning without spending a lot of time and energy on these tasks. Communication options, social tools, and surveys and polling capabilities allow managers to seamlessly and consistently connect and communicate with their team members in proactive, supportive ways. Assessment, rewards, and recognition options allow managers to unobtrusively monitor performance and motivate their employees in fun and unconventional ways.
WorkJam combines all of these functions into a single platform, allowing managers and their employees to work together seamlessly and efficiently.
Engaged employees help companies succeed
Such smooth and effective collaboration enables a management style that empowers instead of disengages employees. Frontline staff feel more seen, heard, and appreciated for their efforts when managers are able to use tools that facilitate robust communication, professional development, and recognition.
For example, WorkJam’s Training & Assessments feature allows employees to take control of their learning while managers monitor progress in a low-impact, ongoing way. And WorkJam’s Shift Management functionality allows employees to operate in partnership with managers to organize work, as they can easily schedule and reschedule shifts themselves and find open shifts in multiple locations.
All of these improvements make both employees and managers more satisfied with their jobs. And this shift in attitude makes it more likely for them to stay with the organization and advance internally, a dynamic that benefits the company’s bottom line. According to Gallup, those companies in the top quartile of employee engagement see 20% higher sales and 21% higher profitability.
The secret to increasing frontline management efficiency lies in next-generation tech. WorkJam can serve as an essential and trusted partner for frontline managers, helping them engage, train, motivate, and retain their employees while freeing them up to focus on priority leadership tasks that provide better value to their organizations.