Corporate Vision entire 20+ year career supporting frontline employees. He started out managing movie theatres and theme parks before making the jump to L&D with Disney and Kaplan. “Just like any other employee, frontline workers deserve technology that empowers them to tackle challenges, make informed decisions and perform at their best.” It seems simple, but corporate learning technology isn’t enabling frontlines in this way. Built to meet the needs of deskbound, corporate employees, the traditional LMS has too many gaps. It can’t adequately support the diverse, distributed and task-oriented workforces that comprise frontline industries in retail, supermarkets, hospitality, foodservice, warehouses and more. For one thing, it’s not available in their moments of need. Let’s face it: society is still in a labour crunch, and frontline staff members are diving in as quickly as possible. They must onboard quickly on the basics and then pull up additional training resources as needed, in the flow of work, with the devices they’re already using—from personal smartphones to Zebra handhelds and much more. The traditional LMS also distils “success” down to a few basic metrics, such as completion rate or test scores. At the scale of frontline organisations, which often employ tens or even hundreds of thousands of workers, there is a scalability required to monitor and optimise any technology being utilised—and when L&D teams are only getting the bare minimum of data, there is also a lost opportunity for more insights to make data-driven decisions and improve the overall frontline experience. Most importantly: the traditional approach is inherently forgettable. “Humans are wired to retain info in small bites over time. To make knowledge stick, they need to start applying it right after they learn it,” says JD. “Traditional corporate training fights against this human nature with lengthy classroom sessions and online courses that feel a lot like school. Then employees quickly forget what they learn—if they learned it at all—because they’re overwhelmed with everyday tasks.” As a result, frontline workers are underserved when it comes to getting the training, information, resources, and enablement they need to do their jobs well. This is a problem, especially as frontline industries are experiencing disruptions and challenges like never before. “Today’s workplace is a balancing act. Managers are being challenged to do more with less while still delivering exceptional experiences that bring customers back,” says JD. “Plus, they need to prepare to deal with the next big operational change, which could be anything from a new regulation, the next big product release or an emergency situation.” According to JD and the company, all of these disruptions have one thing in common: the need for frontline staff to have the knowledge, skills, tools and motivation to do their best to help businesses overcome them and achieve their goals. And the reality is, it takes Most Innovative Workforce Enablement Solutions Provider 2024 Axonify is a frontline-forward learning and enablement platform used by companies such as Walmart, Merck, and Foot Locker to train their employees during five minutes each day in the flow of work with devices they are already using. With bite-sized gamified microlearning, custom training content, embedded communication and more, Axonify is revolutionising the way frontline workers learn, connect and accomplish goals—and they’re only getting started. As frontline workers navigate increased levels of complexities and safety concerns in the workplace, Axonify is finding new ways to support, with a roadmap that includes task management, skills development and more AI functionality. Axonify is closing gaps within traditional learning solutions that have underserved frontline workforces for decades—and that has led the solution to receive this year’s award for Most Innovative Workforce Enablement Solutions Provider. We spoke with JD Dillon, Axonify’s Chief Learning Architect, to learn more about Axonify’s role in helping frontline workers navigate an increasingly complex environment. No industry has been left unscathed by the current turbulent economy, changing consumer habits and the current aftermath of a worldwide pandemic. Industries such as retail, supermarkets, hotels, and foodservice are particularly feeling the crunch. As are frontline workforces globally—individuals who are working directly with your customers and your products. They are desperately looking for the right tools, support and information to do their jobs to it’s highest standards. They want to follow protocol in highly regulated, safetycritical environments. They want to build a sense of community and share ideas across highly distributed locations and teams. But it is just not happening. Why? Here’s the understatement of the year: the experience of a frontline worker is vastly different from that of a corporate worker. Firstly, frontlines have a massive impact on customer experience— research has uncovered an undeniable link between the role of employees and customer engagement. It also shows that frontline workers face higher levels of emotional labour compared to their corporate counterparts, and require more agility and adaptability while navigating volatile settings, with recent Axonify research finding that 40% of retail and grocery employees feel scared to go to work. In other words, the frontline experience is getting more complex, more challenging, and much more dangerous- and they urgently need the right support, information and resources to navigate it. “Frontline work is different. It’s hands-on. It’s on-location. It’s mobile,” says JD Dillon, Axonify’s Chief Learning Architect. JD has spent his
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